The functional impact of myofiber macroscopic organization and disarray in computational models of the murine heart

TL;DR

This study evaluates how myocardial fiber organization and disarray affect cardiac electromechanical simulations, highlighting the importance of accurate fiber architecture modeling for realistic heart function predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a spatial smoothing strategy to decouple fiber organization from disarray and compares its effects with rule-based models in a high-fidelity murine heart simulation.

Findings

Passive mechanics and activation are weakly affected by fiber disarray.

Active mechanics are highly sensitive to fiber architecture.

Moderate smoothing improves ventricular efficiency, while excessive smoothing or rule-based models can lead to unphysiological results.

Abstract

A major challenge in computational models of cardiac electromechanics is the reconstruction of myocardial fiber architecture, as direct in vivo measurements of fiber orientation are not feasible. Consequently, rule-based methods are commonly adopted as surrogates. This study investigates the respective roles of macroscopic fiber architecture and microscopic fiber disarray in cardiac electromechanical simulations. A high-fidelity biventricular electromechanical model of a murine heart was developed using a high-resolution myocardial fiber field obtained via mesoscopic optical imaging, which serves as a reference ground truth. A spatial smoothing strategy is introduced to decouple macroscopic fiber organization from local disarray, and the resulting responses are also compared with those obtained using a rule-based fiber field. The results show that passive mechanics and electrophysiological activation are only weakly affected by fiber disarray, with global chamber compliance and activation times remaining largely unchanged across different fiber descriptions. In contrast, active mechanics is highly sensitive to fiber architecture. Moderate regularization of the experimentally measured fiber field enhances the ventricular pumping efficiency of the computational model by reducing microscopic disarray while preserving the macroscopic helical organization, whereas excessive smoothing or rule-based fiber reconstructions lead to unphysiologically strong or inefficient contraction. Within this framework, two commonly adopted surrogate strategies to account for fiber disarray are investigated: a reduction of the effective cross-bridge stiffness in the active tension model, and the introduction of controlled misalignment between active tension and the local fiber direction. Overall, the results reveal important limitations of commonly adopted surrogate approaches for modeling fiber disarray.