Efficient low-cost design for high-frequency, accurate hardware implementation of cardiac Purkinje fiber cells for biomedical engineering approaches

Abstract

Within the heart’s ventricle walls are where Purkinje fibers (PFs) are located. They are essential for maintaining a steady cardiac beat because they allow the heart’s conduction system to create synchronized contractions of its ventricles. To replicate or treat some of this organ’s ailments and deficits, hardware representation of the various heart sections is necessary. Models that include a series of differential equations can be used to characterize the performance of Purkinje Fibers (PFs) in Cardiac. To develop hardware that mimics the performance of PF of Cardiac system, the Noble model is updated in this study. Due to the requirement for using units like multipliers, the original model contains non-linear components that are slow and expensive in terms of hardware resources. The main novelty of revised model incorporates non-linear components that have been converted into two base-2 terms accompanied by additional factors. These calculations are executed through efficient and economical digital hardware, including logical shift operations, additions, and subtractions, enabling high-speed processing. To validate the precision and practicality of the suggested model, a digital platform, Virtex-7 FPGA, is employed. The findings demonstrate the suggested model’s simplicity of implementation on this board and its capability to generate various PF output patterns at a maximum frequency of 381.42 MHz. The proposed digital circuit can be applied in application-based fields according to high-speed, low-cost, and accurate design. Based on the high-switching speed of neural data transferring in the human brain, other organs that are realized on hardware platforms need to be designed in high-frequency (speed-up) for adaptation with the brain. Due to removing the non-linear terms, the modified model works 1.95 times faster than the original one and saves the FPGA resources up to 35%. In case of real-world applications, an efficient low-cost hardware design for high-frequency, accurate replication of cardiac Purkinje fiber cells has the potential to revolutionize the development of medical devices for diagnosing and treating cardiac conditions. The speed and cost-effectiveness of design make it particularly promising for the creation of advanced cardiac simulation and treatment systems. The high-speed, low-cost, and accurate hardware design has broader implications for biomedical engineering beyond the cardiac system. The ability to efficiently replicate the functions of biological systems using hardware could open doors for developing high-speed, low-cost, and accurate hardware models for simulating and understanding other biological processes, such as neural data processing in the human brain or the function of other vital organs.