Modelling the effect of thickness on the electromechanical properties of in vitro cardiac cultures: a simulation study

Nowadays, in vitro cardiac cultures offer a valid tool to study the bioelectrical activity and the biomechanics of the heart tissue. Modelling their properties could be helpful for researchers involved in this field. In this paper, we develop a three-dimensional electromechanical model to study how thickness affects the bioelectrical and biomechanical performances of an in vitro culture made of ventricular cells. In particular, by our in silico simulations we want to verify if thickness variations can be a key factor in modifying the response of the whole culture when this one is grown to become a cardiac patch. Therefore, for this parameter we choose three increasing values while keeping a fiber architecture among layers that is similar to the one of the in vivo heart but it is randomly stated at the beginning of each simulation. We prove that, independently from the selected architectures, the more thickness increases the more mechanical improvements are attained, but the more electrical problems may arise too.