A space-time adaptive method for simulating complex cardiac dynamics

For plane-wave and many-spiral states of the experimentally based Luo-Rudy 1 model of heart tissue in large (8 cm square) domains, we show that a space-time-adaptive time-integration algorithm can achieve a factor of 5 reduction in computational effort and memory-but without a reduction in accuracy-when compared to an algorithm using a uniform space-time mesh at the finest resolution. Our results indicate that such an algorithm can be extended straightforwardly to simulate quantitatively three-dimensional electrical dynamics over the whole human heart.