A finite volume method for modeling discontinuous electrical activation in cardiac tissue

This paper describes a finite volume method for modeling electrical activation in a sample of cardiac tissue using the bidomain equations. Microstructural features to the level of cleavage planes between sheets of myocardial fibers in the tissue are explicitly represented. The key features of this implementation compared to previous modeling are that it represents physical discontinuities without the implicit removal of intracellular volume and it generates linear systems of equations that are computationally efficient to construct and solve. Results obtained using this method highlight how the understanding of discontinuous activation in cardiac tissue can form a basis for better understanding defibrillation processes and experimental recordings.