In silico evaluation of arrhythmia

Iteration between computational and experimental physiology has largely contributed to expanding scientific knowledge in cardiovascular research over the last decades. In this article, we briefly review key progress in cardiac modeling for the understanding of arrhythmia, from subcellular dynamics to whole heart electrophysiology. In silico modeling has demonstrated its ability to capture the required physiological complexity, covering stochastic subcellular processes, neural and hormonal regulatory effects, and physiological variability as widely observed in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo. As a result of this unique integration of scales, arrhythmias in both congenital and acquired conditions are currently being investigated in silico, caused by channelopathies, ischemia, and drug cardiotoxicity. This witnesses a close future where in silico methods, deeply integrated with clinical data, are called to play a central role towards the development of personalized medicine