This talk is concerned with the mathematical analysis of a coupled elliptic-parabolic system modeling the interaction between the propagation of electric potential and subsequent deformation of the cardiac tissue. The problem consists in a reaction-diffusion system governing the dynamics of ionic quantities, intra and extra-cellular potentials, and the elasticity equations are adopted to describe the motion of an incompressible material. The coupling between muscle contraction, biochemical reactions and electric activity is introduced
with a so-called active strain decomposition framework, where the material gradient of deformation is split into an active (electrophysiology-dependent) part and an elastic (passive) one. We prove existence of weak solutions to the underlying coupled reaction-diffusion system and uniqueness of regular solutions. A finite element formulation is also introduced, for which we establish existence of discrete solutions and show convergence to a weak solution of the original problem. We close with a numerical example illustrating the behavior of the method and some features of the model.

This joint works with B. Andreianov, A. Quarteroni and R. Ruiz