Tissue specific simulations of interstitial cells of cajal networks using unstructured meshes

Gastrointestinal motility is facilitated by specialized pacemaker cells called Interstitial Cells of Cajal (ICC). ICC play a critical role in coordinating normal motility and its degradation in the gastrointestinal tract is associated with many functional motility disorders. Nonetheless, the degree of degradation and associated clinical impact remains unclear. Continuum modeling frameworks offers a virtual mean to simulate the electrical activity, and analyze the ICC activity in both normal and diseased states. Confocal images of the ICC networks were obtained from the intestine of normal mice. In this study, a new approach is presented where meshes of ICC networks were generated using a Delaunay triangulation and used to solve finite-element based reaction-diffusion equations describing gastrointestinal electrophysiology. The electrical activity was simulated on the ICC network and solutions were compared to those of a regular mesh based on individual pixel locations. The simulation results showed the proposed approach to be approximately 80% more efficient than a pixel-based mesh. The difference in activation time for the entire network between the different methods was observed to be around 4% (about 20 ms). The proposed approach will enable efficient examination of the ICC slow wave activity in larger networks and for longer temporal duration that has been previously impossible. This will provide valuable insights relating ICC degradation to gastrointestinal motility disorders.