Abnormalities in cardiac electrophysiology can lead to severe arrhythmias, and an in-depth understanding of their operating mechanisms is crucial to the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease. However, traditional research methods are limited by ethical and experimental conditions. In recent years, computer simulation technology has provided a new way to study cardiac electrophysiology, but high computational costs limit its application. This article will introduce the real-time cardiac electrophysiology simulation system developed by Zhiyuan Research Institute. This system achieves a super-real-time breakthrough in cardiac activity simulation and brings new hope to cardiovascular disease research.
The mystery of the heart, the engine of life, has always attracted the attention of countless scientists. Abnormalities in cardiac electrophysiology can lead to serious health problems such as arrhythmias, and a thorough understanding of them is crucial to the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease. However, traditional research methods are limited by ethical and experimental conditions, making it difficult to achieve breakthroughs.
In recent years, scientists have turned their attention to computer simulation, trying to build a "digital twin heart" to reproduce the beating of the heart in the virtual world. However, virtual heart simulation is extremely demanding on computing resources. It takes billions of calculations to simulate a few milliseconds of heart activity, and it takes hours or even longer to reproduce one second of heart electrical activity, which greatly limits its use. Applications in clinical and drug development.
Recently, Zhiyuan Research Institute successfully developed a real-time cardiac electrophysiology simulation system, bringing the beating of the virtual heart into the "super real-time" era! In other words, to simulate 1 second of heart activity, the computer only takes 0.84 seconds to complete the simulation. nailed it!
This is no joke. What’s so great about this system? Let’s first talk about why the heart is so important. The heart is the engine of our lives, constantly pumping blood and delivering oxygen and nutrients to the whole body. The beating of the heart relies on electrical signals. If there is a problem with the heart's electrophysiology, it will cause arrhythmia, which may even be life-threatening in severe cases.
Therefore, doctors and scientists have always wanted to study the mysteries of cardiac electrophysiology, but traditional experimental methods are either limited by ethical issues or the experimental conditions are too complex and progress is slow. At this time, computer simulation technology comes in handy. Scientists began to try to build a "virtual heart" in the computer to simulate the beating process of the heart, so that they can more conveniently study cardiac electrophysiology.
However, virtual heart simulation is not an easy task, and it requires extremely high computing resources. Think about it, there are so many cells in the heart, and each cell is constantly undergoing electrical activity. If you want to accurately simulate it, the amount of calculations is simply astronomical! With previous technology, simulating heart activity for a few milliseconds required calculations. With one billion calculations, it would take hours or even longer to reproduce one second of heart electrical activity. This efficiency is too low and cannot be used in clinical and drug development.
The system developed by Zhiyuan Research Institute directly increases the beating speed of the virtual heart to a "super real-time" level, which means that doctors and researchers can observe the heart's activity like watching a movie, and can pause and fast-forward at any time. , going backwards, you can study whatever you want, it’s not too convenient!
So, how does Zhiyuan Research Institute achieve "super real-time"? They don't just talk about it casually, they have put real effort into it!
First, they deeply optimized the anatomy of the heart model. They found that there are actually many cavities in the heart, and the real myocardial tissue only occupies 1/3 of the space. Therefore, they designed a special data structure specifically used to store valid myocardial tissue data. In this way, the computer does not have to waste time processing useless cavity data, and the efficiency is naturally improved.
Second, they improved computational methods for cardiomyocyte electrophysiology. They used a technology called "quantization" to simplify the complex calculation process, and also used a strategy called "loop expansion" to reduce the number of data reads. In this way, the calculation speed was greatly improved. .
Finally, they also optimized the hardware architecture of the computing system. They make full use of the powerful computing power of modern GPUs, optimize data transmission and communication methods, allow data to flow quickly between different computing units, and further improve computing efficiency.
Through these optimization strategies, Zhiyuan Research Institute finally achieved a 180-fold increase in cardiac simulation speed, which is definitely a groundbreaking breakthrough in the field of cardiac simulation!
This achievement not only brings new hope to the fields of arrhythmia mechanism research, surgical planning, new drug research and development, but also provides valuable experience for real-time simulation of other complex physical systems. It is another milestone in the history of the development of cardiac simulation technology. !
This breakthrough result from Zhiyuan Research Institute marks the entry of cardiac electrophysiological simulation technology into a new era, providing a powerful tool for future research and treatment of cardiovascular diseases, as well as real-time simulation of other complex physical systems. Provided valuable experience and reference.