Modified bidomain model with passive periodic heterogeneities

In this paper we study how mesoscopic heterogeneities affect electrical signal propagation in cardiac tissue. The standard model used in cardiac electrophysiology is a bidomain model - a system of degenerate parabolic PDEs, coupled with a set of ODEs, representing the ionic behviour of the cardiac cells. We assume that the heterogeneities in the tissue are periodically distributed diffusive regions, that are significantly larger than a cardiac cell. These regions represent the fibrotic tissue, collagen or fat, that is electrically passive. We give a mathematical setting of the model. Using semigroup theory we prove that such model has a uniformly bounded solution. Finally, we use two–scale convergence to find the limit problem that represents the average behviour of the electrical signal in this setting.