Simultaneous data assimilation and cardiac electrophysiology model correction using differentiable physics and deep learning.

Abstract

Modelling complex systems, like the human heart, has made great progress over the last decades. Patient-specific models, called 'digital twins', can aid in diagnosing arrhythmias and personalizing treatments. However, building highly accurate predictive heart models requires a delicate balance between mathematical complexity, parameterization from measurements and validation of predictions. Cardiac electrophysiology (EP) models range from complex biophysical models to simplified phenomenological models. Complex models are accurate but computationally intensive and challenging to parameterize, while simplified models are computationally efficient but less realistic. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach by leveraging deep learning to complete a simplified cardiac model from data. Our novel framework has two components, decomposing the dynamics into a physics based and a data-driven term. This construction allows our framework to learn from data of different complexity, while simultaneously estimating model parameters. First, using in silico data, we demonstrate that this framework can reproduce the complex dynamics of cardiac transmembrane potential even in the presence of noise in the data. Second, using ex vivo optical data of action potentials (APs), we demonstrate that our framework can identify key physical parameters for anatomical zones with different electrical properties, as well as to reproduce the AP wave characteristics obtained from various pacing locations. Our physics-based data-driven approach may improve cardiac EP modelling by providing a robust biophysical tool for predictions.