School of Mathematics

Kevin Burrage

Coping with variability and heterogeneity when modelling the electrophysiology of the heart

In this talk I will give an overview of different approaches to dealing with variability and heterogeneity when  modelling the electrophysiology of the heart. I will focus on two aspects.  The first will be based on building populations of ODE-based cell models as a proxy for population variability.  I will discuss various sampling strategies and compare, in particular, Latin Hypercube sampling and an SMC Bayesian approach.  In the second part of the talk I will introduce Space fractional partial differential equations  as a mechanism for capturing tissue heterogeneity.  I will show how model parameters can be extracted from a variety of sources including a heart in a dish, ECGs and Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Images and using clinical data we will attempt to construct spatial biomarkers for understanding hypertrophic cardiomyopathy via the disarray of the cardiac fibres.

This is joint work with Dr Alfonso Bueno-Orovio, Professor Blanca Rodriguez, Dr David Kay and Professor Vicente Grau (Oxford) and Pamela Burrage, Chris Drovandi, Nicole Cusimano, Steve Psaltis and Tony Pettitt (QUT).