A three-field,bi-domain based approach to the strongly coupled electromechanics of the heart

We propose a novel, unconditionally stable and fully coupled finite element method for the bidomain based approach to cardiac electromechanics. To this end, the transmembrane potential, the extracellular potential, and the displacement field are treated as independent variables such that the already coupled electrophysiology problem in the bidomain setting is further extended to the electromechanical coupling. In this multifield problem, the intrinsic coupling arises from both excitation-induced contraction of cardiac cells and the deformation-induced generation of intra-cellular currents. The respective bidomain reaction-diffusion and the momentum balance equations are recast into the corresponding weak forms through a conventional isoparametric Galerkin approach. The resultant set of non-linear residual equations is consistently linearized. The monolithic scheme is employed to avoid stability issues that may arise due to the strong coupling between excitation and deformation. The performance of the put forward framework is further assessed through three-dimensional representative electromechanical initial-boundary value problems. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Stochastically forced cardiac bidomain model

The bidomain system of degenerate reaction–diffusion equations is a well-established spatial model of electrical activity in cardiac tissue, with “reaction” linked to the cellular action potential and “diffusion” representing current flow between cells. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a “stochastically forced” version of the bidomain model that accounts for various random effects. We establish the existence of martingale (probabilistic weak) solutions to the stochastic bidomain model. The result is proved by means of an auxiliary nondegenerate system and the Faedo–Galerkin method. To prove convergence of the approximate solutions, we use the stochastic compactness method and Skorokhod–Jakubowski a.s. representations. Finally, via a pathwise uniqueness result, we conclude that the martingale solutions are pathwise (i.e., probabilistic strong) solutions.     

On the bidomain problem with FitzHugh–Nagumo transport

The bidomain problem with FitzHugh–Nagumo transport is studied in the \(L_p\!-\!L_q\)-framework. Reformulating the problem as a semilinear evolution equation, local well-posedness is proved in strong as well as in weak settings. We obtain solvability for initial data in the critical spaces of the problem. For dimension \(d\le 4\), by means of energy estimates and a recent result of Serrin type, global existence is shown. Finally, stability of spatially constant equilibria is investigated, to the result that the stability properties of such equilibria are the same as for the classical FitzHugh–Nagumo system in ODE’s. These properties of the bidomain equations are obtained combining recent results on the bidomain operator (Hieber and Prüss in Theory for the bidomain operator, submitted, 2018), on critical spaces for parabolic evolution equations (Prüss et al in J Differ Equ 264:2028–2074, 2018), and qualitative theory of evolution equations.     

Optimal control of the bidomain system (I): The monodomain approximation with the Rogers-McCulloch model

For the monodomain approximation of the bidomain equations, a weak solution concept is proposed. We analyze it for the FitzHugh-Nagumo and the Rogers-McCulloch ionic models, obtaining existence and uniqueness theorems. Subsequently, we investigate optimal control problems subject to the monodomain equations. After proving the existence of global minimizers, the system of the first-order necessary optimality conditions is rigorously characterized. For the adjoint system, we prove an existence and regularity theorem as well.     

Existence and uniqueness of the solution for the bidomain model used in cardiac electrophysiology

We study the well-posedness of the bidomain model that is commonly used to simulate electrophysiological wave propagation in the heart. We base our analysis on a formulation of the bidomain model as a system of coupled parabolic and elliptic PDEs for two potentials and ODEs representing the ionic activity. We first reformulate the parabolic and elliptic PDEs into a single parabolic PDE by the introduction of a bidomain operator. We properly define and analyze this operator, basically a non-differential and non-local operator. We then present a proof of existence, uniqueness and regularity of a local solution in time through a semigroup approach, but that applies to fairly general ionic models. The bidomain model is next reformulated as a parabolic variational problem, through the introduction of a bidomain bilinear form. A proof of existence and uniqueness of a global solution in time is obtained using a compactness argument, this time for an ionic model reading as a single ODE but including polynomial nonlinearities. Finally, the hypothesis behind the existence of that global solution are verified for three commonly used ionic models, namely the FitzHugh–Nagumo, Aliev–Panfilov and MacCulloch models.     

Stability of Front Solutions of the Bidomain Equation

The bidomain model is the standard model describing electrical activity of the heart. Here we study the stability of planar front solutions of the bidomain equation with a bistable nonlinearity (the bidomain Allen‐Cahn equation) in two spatial dimensions. In the bidomain Allen‐Cahn equation a Fourier multiplier operator whose symbol is a positive homogeneous rational function of degree two (the bidomain operator) takes the place of the Laplacian in the classical Allen‐Cahn equation. Stability of the planar front may depend on the direction of propagation given the anisotropic nature of the bidomain operator. We establish various criteria for stability and instability of the planar front in each direction of propagation. Our analysis reveals that planar fronts can be unstable in the bidomain Allen‐Cahn equation in striking contrast to the classical or anisotropic Allen‐Cahn equations. We identify two types of instabilities, one with respect to long‐wavelength perturbations, the other with respect to medium‐wavelength perturbations. Interestingly, whether the front is stable or unstable under long‐wavelength perturbations does not depend on the bistable nonlinearity and is fully determined by the convexity properties of a suitably defined Frank diagram. On the other hand, stability under intermediate‐wavelength perturbations does depend on the choice of bistable nonlinearity. Intermediate‐wavelength instabilities can occur even when the Frank diagram is convex, so long as the bidomain operator does not reduce to the Laplacian. We shall also give a remarkable example in which the planar front is unstable in all directions.© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A multiresolution space‐time adaptive scheme for the bidomain model in electrocardiology

The bidomain model of electrical activity of myocardial tissue consists of a possibly degenerate parabolic PDE coupled with an elliptic PDE for the transmembrane and extracellular potentials, respectively. This system of two scalar PDEs is supplemented by a time‐dependent ODE modeling the evolution of the gating variable. In the simpler subcase of the monodomain model, the elliptic PDE reduces to an algebraic equation. Since typical solutions of the bidomain and monodomain models exhibit wavefronts with steep gradients, we propose a finite volume scheme enriched by a fully adaptive multiresolution method, whose basic purpose is to concentrate computational effort on zones of strong variation of the solution. Time adaptivity is achieved by two alternative devices, namely locally varying time stepping and a Runge‐Kutta‐Fehlberg‐type adaptive time integration. A series of numerical examples demonstrates that these methods are efficient and sufficiently accurate to simulate the electrical activity in myocardial tissue with affordable effort. In addition, the optimal choice of the threshold for discarding nonsignificant information in the multiresolution representation of the solution is addressed, and the numerical efficiency and accuracy of the method is measured in terms of CPU time speed‐up, memory compression, and errors in different norms. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2010     

Order optimal preconditioners for fully implicit Runge‐Kutta schemes applied to the bidomain equations

The partial differential equation part of the bidomain equations is discretized in time with fully implicit Runge–Kutta methods, and the resulting block systems are preconditioned with a block diagonal preconditioner. By studying the time‐stepping operator in the proper Sobolev spaces, we show that the preconditioned systems have bounded condition numbers given that the Runge–Kutta scheme is A‐stable and irreducible with an invertible coefficient matrix. A new proof of order optimality of the preconditioners for the one‐leg discretization in time of the bidomain equations is also presented. The theoretical results are verified by numerical experiments. Additionally, the concept of weakly positive‐definite matrices is introduced and analyzed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq Eq 27: 1290–1312, 2011     

Algebraic multigrid preconditioners for the bidomain reaction–diffusion system

The so-called bidomain system is possibly the most complete model for the cardiac bioelectric activity. It consists of a reaction–diffusion system, modeling the intra, extracellular and transmembrane potentials, coupled through a nonlinear reaction term with a stiff system of ordinary differential equations describing the ionic currents through the cellular membrane. In this paper we address the problem of efficiently solving the large linear system arising in the finite element discretization of the bidomain model, when a semiimplicit method in time is employed. We analyze the use of structured algebraic multigrid preconditioners on two major formulations of the model, and report on our numerical experience under different discretization parameters and various discontinuity properties of the conductivity tensors. Our numerical results show that the less exercised formulation provides the best overall performance on a typical simulation of the myocardium excitation process.     

Necessary Condition for a Strong Relative Minimum for Singular Optimal Control

A necessary condition is developed for a strong relative minimum for a first-order singular optimal control. It is shown that the strong condition is identical with the existing weak condition, namely, the generalized Legendre-Clebsch condition. It is conjectured that the strong condition for a second-order singular control will be the same as the corresponding weak condition.     

Solving the cardiac bidomain equations using graphics processing units

The computational modeling of the heart has been shown to be a very useful tool. The models, which become more realistic each day, provide a better understanding of the complex biophysical processes related to the electrical activity in the heart, e.g., in the case of cardiac arrhythmias. However, the increasing complexity of the models challenges high performance computing in many aspects. This work presents a cardiac simulator based on the bidomain equations that exploits the new parallel architecture of graphics processing units (GPUs). The initial results are promising. The use of the GPU accelerates the cardiac simulator by about 6 times compared to the best performance obtained in a general-purpose processor (CPU). In addition, the GPU implementation was compared to an efficient parallel implementation developed for cluster computing. A single desktop computer equipped with a GPU is shown to be 1.4 times faster than the parallel implementation of the bidomain equations running on a cluster composed of 16 processing cores.     

Theorems of the alternative and optimality conditions

A theorem of the alternative is stated for generalized systems. It is shown how to deduce, from such a theorem, known optimality conditions like saddle-point conditions, regularity conditions, known theorems of the alternative, and new ones. Exterior and interior penalty approaches, weak and strong duality are viewed as weak and strong alternative, respectively.     

Wavelets Techniques for Pointwise Anti-H?lderian Irregularity

In this paper, we introduce a notion of weak pointwise H?lder regularity, starting from the definition of the pointwise anti-H?lder irregularity. Using this concept, a weak spectrum of singularities can be defined as for the usual pointwise H?lder regularity. We build a class of wavelet series satisfying the multifractal formalism and thus show the optimality of the upper bound. We also show that the weak spectrum of singularities is disconnected from the casual one (referred to here as strong spectrum of singularities) by exhibiting a multifractal function made of Davenport series whose weak spectrum differs from the strong one.     

On weak–strong uniqueness for the compressible Navier–Stokes system with non-monotone pressure law

We show the weak–strong uniqueness property for the compressible Navier–Stokes system with general non-monotone pressure law. A weak solution coincides with the strong solution emanating from the same initial data as long as the latter solution exists.     

具有一个细焦点和一个粗焦点的二次系统极限环的个数

Abstract. It is proved that the quadratic system with a weak focus and a strong focus has atmost one limit cycle around the strong focus, and as the weak focus is a 2nd -order (or 3rd-order ) weak focus the quadratic system has at most two (one) limit cycles which have (1,1)-distribution ((0,1)-distribution).     

集群企业间关系强度对合作技术创新的影响——基于企业类型和创新类型的视角

集群企业之间的关系强度对合作技术创新具有何种影响,一直存在争论。为了进一步分析该问题,文章借鉴相关研究成果,将集群企业分为核心企业和配套企业,将技术创新分为探索式创新和利用式创新,在此基础上建立了合作创新的博弈论模型。文章研究得出:核心企业之间的弱关系有利于探索式创新,核心企业与配套企业之间的强关系有利于利用式创新;探索式创新和利用式创新是相互促进、相互补充的。     

Existence of solutions for the MHD-Leray-alpha equations and their relations to the MHD equations

In this paper we derive some new equations and we call them MHD-Leray-alpha equations which are similar to the MHD equations. We put forward the concept of weak and strong solutions for the new equations. Whether the 3-dimensional MHD equations have a unique weak solution is unknown, however, there is a unique weak solution for the 3-dimensional MHD-Leray-alpha equations. The global existence of strong solution and the Gevrey class regularity for the new equations are also obtained. Furthermore, we prove that the solutions of the MHD-Leray-alpha equations converge to the solution of the MHD equations in the weak sense as the parameter ε in the new equations converges to zero.     

Stability theorem and truncation error analysis for the Glimm scheme and for a front tracking method for flows with strong discontinuities

Typical nonlinear wave interaction problems involve strong waves moving through a background of weak disturbance. Previous existence theorems and error analysis for computations are usually restricted to more idealized situations such as small data or single equations. We consider here the problem of a single strong discontinuity interacting with a weak background for general hyperbolic systems of conservation laws. We obtain the stability, consistency theorems and upper bounds of the truncation errors for the Glimm scheme and for a front tracking method. The major error in the Glimm scheme is the error generated by the strong discontinuity. This error is reduced when a front tracking method is applied to follow the location of the strong discontinuity. This demonstrates an advantage of front tracking methods in one-space dimension.     

On transience of Lévy-type processes

In this paper, we study weak and strong transience of a class of Feller processes associated with pseudo-differential operators, the so-called Lévy-type processes. As a main result, we derive Chung-Fuchs type conditions (in terms of the symbol of the corresponding pseudo-differential operator) for these properties, which are sharp for Lévy processes. Also, as a consequence, we discuss the weak and strong transience with respect to the dimension of the state space and Pruitt indices, thus generalizing some well-known results related to elliptic diffusion and stable Lévy processes. Finally, in the case when the symbol is radial (in the co-variable) we provide conditions for the weak and strong transience in terms of the Lévy measures.