A successful defibrillation
shock. Click to play.

Research Projects

  • Defibrillation
    • Defibrillation mechanisms
      • View animation of a period of ventricular fibrillation followed by a successful defibrillation shock on our model of a rabbit heart. (1.2 Mb file)
      • A longer animation showing the rabbit heart geometry and several successful and failed defibrillation shocks is available (broken link). (7.9 Mb file)
    • Shock effects (password required)
    • Sensitivity analysis? (password required)
  • Cardiac Arrhythmogenesis
  • Ventricular Geometry
A study led by our collaborator, Dr. Blanca Rodriguez, described how cardiac anatomy affects the heart's vulnerability to arrhythmias. Images generated in our Cool Graphics visualization software was featured on the cover of the July 22, 2005 issue of Circulation Research.
  • Computational Biology
The Virtual Heart Lab is involved in a number of projects related to computational biology. Some of these involve research, others are directed towards developing infrastructure to support computational research in biology and biomedical research.
  • Pacific Fatigue Laboratory - The Pacific Fatigue Laboratory (PFL), in partnership with the Workwell Foundation, is a research, clinical and teaching laboratory focused on the functional aspects of chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) and other fatigue-related disorders.
  • Heart Rate Variability (password required)
  • Energy Partitioning (password required)
  • Integrative Biology - An e-Science project in the UK which seeks to create the infrastructure required for large-scale, international research projects using computational techniques to study complex biological systems.
    • The Virtual Heart Lab has teamed with Matthew Mascord to help develop a Virtual Research Environment for computational modeling of the cardiac arrhythmias.
  • Reality Grid - Another e-Science project whose goal is to develop the "middle-ware" which allows computer simulation and data analysis software to be run in a distributed fashion on loosely coupled networks of computer resources.