Modeling Cardiac Stimulation by a Pacemaker, with Accurate Tissue-Electrode Interface

In this paper we model a cardiac pacemaker placed in a bath with a cardiac excitable tissue. We take into account electrochemical phenomena observed at the electrodes during pacing by using equivalent circuits, whose parameters are calibrated with respect to bench tests data. The complete model consists of a pacemaker model coupled to a re-scaled cardiac ionic model through these circuits. It is compared with ex-vivo experimental data of stimulation threshold detection. We perform an additional study of the influence of the scaling parameters, that can help matching experimental results.