An Image-Based Model of the Whole Human Heart with Detailed Anatomical Structure and Fiber Orientation

Abstract

Many heart anatomy models have been developed to study the electrophysiological properties of the human heart. However, none of them includes the geometry of the whole human heart. In this study, an anatomically detailed mathematical model of the human heart was firstly reconstructed from the computed tomography images. In the reconstructed model, the atria consisted of atrial muscles, sinoatrial node, crista terminalis, pectinate muscles, Bachmann’s bundle, intercaval bundles, and limbus of the fossa ovalis. The atrioventricular junction included the atrioventricular node and atrioventricular ring, and the ventricles had ventricular muscles, His bundle, bundle branches, and Purkinje network. The epicardial and endocardial myofiber orientations of the ventricles and one layer of atrial myofiber orientation were then measured. They were calculated using linear interpolation technique and minimum distance algorithm, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first anatomically-detailed human heart model with corresponding experimentally measured fibers orientation. In addition, the whole heart excitation propagation was simulated using a monodomain model. The simulated normal activation sequence agreed well with the published experimental findings.