1.

Heart – important:
The heart is a muscular organ, in all vertebrates responsible for pumping blood through the
blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions, or a similar structure in annelids, mollusks,
and arthropods. The heart of a vertebrate is composed of cardiac muscle, an involuntary
muscle tissue which is found only within this organ. The average human heart beating at 72
BPM, will beat approximately 2.5 billion times during a lifetime spanning 66 years.
The essential function of the heart is to pump blood to various parts of the body.

2. Physiology/ anatomy of the heart

The heart has four chambers: right and left atria and right and left ventricles.

The two atria act as collecting reservoirs for blood returning to the heart while the two
ventricles act as pumps to eject the blood to the body. As in any pumping system, the heart
comes complete with valves to prevent the back flow of blood. Deoxygenated blood returns to
the heart via the major veins, enters the right atrium, passes into the right ventricle, and from
there is ejected to the pulmonary artery on the way to the lungs. Oxygenated blood returning
from the lungs enters the left atrium via the pulmonary veins, passes into the left ventricle,
and is then ejected to the aorta.
The heart has four separate compartments or chambers. The upper chamber on each side of
the heart, which is called an atrium, receives and collects the blood coming to the heart. The
atrium then delivers blood to the powerful lower chamber, called a ventricle, which pumps
blood away from the heart through powerful, rhythmic contractions.
The human heart is actually two pumps in one. The right side receives oxygen-poor blood
from the various regions of the body and delivers it to the lungs. In the lungs, oxygen is
absorbed in the blood. The left side of the heartreceives the oxygen-rich blood from the lungs
and delivers it to the rest of the body.

3. Electrical behavior:
One thing that distinguishes the heart from other muscles is that the heart muscle is a
"syncytium," meaning a meshwork of muscle cells interconnected by contiguous cytoplasmic
bridges. Thus, an electrical excitation occurring in one cell can spread to neighboring cells.
Another defining characteristic is the presence of pacemaker cells. These are specialized
muscle cells that can generate action potentials rhythmically.
Under normal circumstances, a wave of electrical excitation originates in the pacemaker cells
in the sinoatrial (S-A) node, located on top of the right atrium. Specialized muscle fibers
transmit this excitation throughout the atria and initiate a coordinated contraction of the atrial
walls. Meanwhile, some of these fibers excite a group of cells located at the border of the left
atrium and ventricle known as the atrioventricular (A-V) node. The A-V node is responsible
for spreading the excitation throughout the two ventricles and causing a coordinated
ventricular contraction.

The sequence of electrical activity within the heart is displayed in the diagrams above and
occurs as follows: As the SA node fires, each electrical impulse travels through the right and
left atrium. This electrical activity causes the two upper chambers of the heart to contract.
This electrical activity and can be recorded from the surface of the body as a "P" wave" on the
patient's EKG or ECG (electrocardiogram).

4. Arrhythmias
Arrhythmias (or dysrhythmias) are problems that affect the electrical system of the heart
muscle, producing abnormal heart rhythms. They can cause the heart to pump less effectively.
Arrhythmias are disorders of the regular rhythmic beating of the heart. Arrhythmias can occur
in a healthy heart and be of minimal consequence. They also may indicate a serious problem
and lead to heart disease, stroke or sudden cardiac death.

* Tachycardia
An unusually fast beating of the heart is called tachycardia. Medical professionals diagnosing
a patient with tachycardia may say that the patient is "tachy." Normal heart rate for an adult is
between 60 and 100 beats per minute. If the heart rate climbs above 100 beats per minute, the
patient is said to be experiencing tachycardia. Tachycardia is simply the unusually fast
beating of the heart. It is not always life threatening, but it can lead to serious and life
threatening conditions. The two main categories of tachycardia are ventricular tachycardia
and supraventricular tachycardia, referring to the area of the heart where the problem occurs.
* Fibrillation
Fibrillating means quivering, or rapid beating.
Irregular, rapid beating of the atrial chambers characterizes Atrial Fibrillation. This happens
when the normal system that conducts electricity in the atria malfunctions. A storm of
electrical activity across both atria causes them to fibrillate 300 to 600 times per minute.
The ventricles pick up only a small number of these impulses, but the ventricular rate can
approach 180 or higher. Whether Atrial Fibrillation happens at high or low heart rates, its
irregular rhythm means the ventricles can't pump blood efficiently to the rest of the body.
Instead, blood pools in the heart and the body doesn't get enough.

5. Models:

* Noble :
The Noble model is the first mathematical model of cardiac action potentials and pacemaker
rhythm to be based on experimental recordings of ionic currents. It is a development from the
Hodgkin-Huxley model of the action potential in the squid giant axon. Based on its
formulations hundreds of other models were developed representing cardiac muscle cells in
more and more detail for a number of different species – from mouse to human (see a
repository of cell models).
* PDE (Partial Differential Equations):
The electrical activity of the heart may be modeled with a system of partial differential
equations (PDEs) known as the bidomain model. Computer simulations based on these
equations may become a helpful tool to understand the relationship between changes in the
electrical field and various heart diseases. Because of the rapid variations in the electrical
field, sufficiently accurate simulations require a fine-scale discretization of the equations. For
realistic geometries this leads to a large number of grid points and consequently large linear
systems to be solved for each time step.
* ODE (Ordinary differential equation):
In mathematics, an ODE is a relation that contains functions of only one independent
variable, and one or more of its derivatives with respect to that variable. ODE is also point
model of the cardiac myofilament based on ordinary differential equations.
Ordinary differential equations are to be distinguished from partial differential equations
where there are several independent variables involving partial derivatives. Ordinary
differential equations arise in many different contexts including geometry, mechanics,
astronomy and population modelling. Many famous mathematicians have studied differential
equations and contributed to the field, including Newton, Leibniz, the Bernoulli family,
Riccati, Clairaut, d'Alembert and Euler.
* Cellular automata:
Cellular Automata (CA) models offer a good compromise between computational complexity
and biological plausibility while qualitative models have expressive power for explicitly
describing dynamic processes. The CA model includes elements characterizing muscle, nodal
tissue, and bypass conduction. Each element exhibits adaptive properties to cycle length and
to the prematurity of incoming impulses. A crude electrocardiogram is also simulated via an
equivalent source formulation. Arrhythmias such as the Wenckebach phenomenon, atrial
flutter, or extrasystole-triggered tachyarrhythmias can be simulated using relatively simple
models when they incorporate the fast conduction system with muscle tissue and when the
model elements exhibit adaptive properties. CA model can be coupled to a qualitative model
to produce a system that combines the fine grained description of CA models with the high
level interpretative role of qualitative models.