Gaussian Process-Based Spatiotemporal Modeling of Electrical Wave Propagation in Human Atrium^.

Rhythm regularity of the heart depends on how electrical impulses spread through the cardiac conduction system. Any abnormal activities in the electrical impulses can lead to serious cardiac disorders or sudden death. It is important to understand the electrical activities of the human heart in both healthy and diseased conditions to determine the cause of cardiac disorders and explore the best therapeutic designs. Mathematical models calibrated with clinical and/or in-vitro data are popularly used to study cardiac function and investigate treatment effects. Most of the current human heart models are highly integrated and couple over a hundred equations across different organizational scales of ion channel, cell, and muscle. The model complex poses a significant computational challenge on cardiac simulation. This study developed a metamodel to replace the time-consuming simulation model. Specifically, Gaussian Process (GP) is used to reconstruct the spatiotemporal variations of the cell membrane potential in left atrium. Four different covariance functions were used to infer the potential distributions. The GP model provides an accurate estimation of the spatiotemporal propagation of electrical waves with a small set of data and shows great advantage in computations as compared to traditional models.