spikeHeart

SpikeHeart is a fictional open-source software framework designed to simulate cardiac electrical activity by tracking spike events such as action potentials in cardiac tissue. It provides a computational platform for researchers and educators to model how electrical impulses propagate through the myocardium, assess how conduction abnormalities can lead to arrhythmias, and explore theoretical interventions in silico.

The core of SpikeHeart is an event-driven engine that represents cardiac cells as nodes with electrophysiological state variables. The model supports one-, two-, and three-dimensional tissue representations, with anisotropic conduction to reflect myocardial fiber orientation. It integrates with ordinary differential equation solvers, supports multi-scale modeling from ion-channel dynamics to tissue-level propagation, and exposes a Python API for scripting and data analysis.

Development and history: conceived in 2012 by researchers at the Center for Computational Cardiology, SpikeHeart has evolved through community contributions under a permissive license. It emphasizes extensibility, with plug-in modules for ion-channel models, pathological remodeling, and external stimuli. Documentation and tutorials accompany the project to support teaching and collaborative research.

Applications and evaluation: SpikeHeart is used in academic settings for teaching cardiac electrophysiology, for in silico experiments on arrhythmia mechanisms, and for conceptually exploring planning approaches to ablation strategies. Limitations include simplified cell models, computational cost for large-scale simulations, and the need to validate findings against experimental data. The project is not intended to substitute for clinical decision-making.

Related concepts include cardiac electrophysiology, action potentials, spike trains, and arrhythmia modeling.