Modeling the Aging Heart

This chapter reviews the current state-of-the-art models in atrial and ventricular arrhythmogenesis as arising from fibrotic remodeling in the heart, as well as the contributions these modeling studies have made to our understanding of the mechanisms of arrhythmias in the aging heart. Because of the rapid advance of structural imaging methodologies in cardiac electrophysiology, a larger emphasis is placed on studies that have used such imaging methodologies to construct geometrically realistic structural models of cardiac tissue, or the organ itself, where the regional remodeling properties of the myocardium can also be represented in a realistic way. We emphasize how the acquired knowledge can be used to pave the way for clinical applications of cardiac function modeling under the conditions of fibrotic remodeling.