The Intervention Centre, Oslo University Hospital, 0372 Oslo, Norway.
Computer College, Weinan Normal University, Weinan 714099, China.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 May 14;20(10):2792. doi: 10.3390/s20102792.
The heart consists of billions of cardiac muscle cells-cardiomyocytes-that work in a coordinated fashion to supply oxygen and nutrients to the body. Inter-connected specialized cardiomyocytes form signaling channels through which the electrical signals are propagated throughout the heart, controlling the heart's beat to beat function of the other cardiac cells. In this paper, we study to what extent it is possible to use ordinary cardiomyocytes as communication channels between components of a recently proposed multi-nodal leadless pacemaker, to transmit data encoded in subthreshold membrane potentials. We analyze signal propagation in the cardiac infrastructure considering noise in the communication channel by performing numerical simulations based on the Luo-Rudy computational model. The Luo-Rudy model is an action potential model but describes the potential changes with time including membrane potential and action potential stages, separated by the thresholding mechanism. Demonstrating system performance, we show that cardiomyocytes can be used to establish an artificial communication system where data are reliably transmitted between 10 s of cells. The proposed subthreshold cardiac communication lays the foundation for a new intra-cardiac communication technique.
心脏由数十亿个心肌细胞（cardiomyocytes）组成，这些细胞以协调的方式工作，为身体提供氧气和营养。相互连接的专门心肌细胞形成信号通道，电信号通过这些通道在整个心脏中传播，控制着心脏的跳动和其他心肌细胞的功能。在本文中，我们研究了在多大程度上可以使用普通心肌细胞作为最近提出的多节点无导线起搏器组件之间的通信通道，以传输亚阈值膜电位编码的数据。我们通过基于 Luo-Rudy 计算模型的数值模拟来分析心脏基础设施中的信号传播，同时考虑通信通道中的噪声。Luo-Rudy 模型是一种动作电位模型，但它描述了包括膜电位和动作电位阶段在内的随时间变化的电位变化，由阈值机制分隔。为了演示系统性能，我们表明心肌细胞可以用于建立人工通信系统，在该系统中，数据可以在 10 个以上的细胞之间可靠地传输。所提出的亚阈值心脏通信为新的心脏内通信技术奠定了基础。
