The heart is an electromagnetic pump. The electrical activation of heart cells initiates mechanical contraction of the heart muscles, pumping blood throughout the body. Although models of the electrical behaviour have been developed, they are rather complex and computationally expensive.

In this project a simple Cellular Automaton (CA) based model of the electrical activation and propagation has been developed. In contrast to numerical, bundled with differential equations, conventional approaches, a CA uses a series of simple rules, straightforward and fast to compute. Specifically, CA consists of a simulation which is discrete in time, state and space.

In the simulation software developed, it is possible to reproduce the propagation of different kinds of plane waves in a set of different tissue geometry patterns, by manipulating a rich set of parameters. Furthermore, this programme has achieved to simulate the genesis of spiral-wave re-entries, which is the main cause of ventricular tachycardia and fibrillation.