title: Verification of cardiac tissue electrophysiology simulators using an N-version benchmark.
abstract: Ongoing developments in cardiac modelling have resulted, in particular, in the development of advanced and increasingly complex computational frameworks for simulating cardiac tissue electrophysiology. The goal of these simulations is often to represent the detailed physiology and pathologies of the heart using codes that exploit the computational potential of high-performance computing architectures. These developments have rapidly progressed the simulation capacity of cardiac virtual physiological human style models; however, they have also made it increasingly challenging to verify that a given code provides a faithful representation of the purported governing equations and corresponding solution techniques. This study provides the first cardiac tissue electrophysiology simulation benchmark to allow these codes to be verified. The benchmark was successfully evaluated on 11 simulation platforms to generate a consensus gold-standard converged solution. The benchmark definition in combination with the gold-standard solution can now be used to verify new simulation codes and numerical methods in the future.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, UK. steven.niederer@kcl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Steven A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Niederer
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kerfoot
authors.forename: Alan P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Benson
authors.forename: Miguel O
authors.initials: MO
authors.lastname: Bernabeu
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bernus
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bradley
authors.forename: Elizabeth M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Cherry
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Clayton
authors.forename: Flavio H
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Fenton
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Garny
authors.forename: Elvio
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Heidenreich
authors.forename: Sander
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Land
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Maleckar
authors.forename: Pras
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pathmanathan
authors.forename: Gernot
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Plank
authors.forename: José F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Rodríguez
authors.forename: Ishani
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Roy
authors.forename: Frank B
authors.initials: FB
authors.lastname: Sachse
authors.forename: Gunnar
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Seemann
authors.forename: Ola
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Skavhaug
authors.forename: Nic P
authors.initials: NP
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D019295:Computational Biology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003201:Computers; D004594:Electrophysiology / Q000379:methods*; D006321:Heart / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D016011:Normal Distribution; D012984:Software; D013997:Time Factors