Sofia Botti

Multiscale Modeling in Computational Cardiology: 

From Cells to Tissue Dynamics 

Computational cardiology provides a mathematical framework for describing and simulating car diac electrophysiology across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Starting from cellular models of ionic currents, continuum formulations enable the study of emergent electrical activity at the tissue level, giving rise to complex multiscale systems characterized by strong nonlinearities, heterogeneity, and coupling across scales. 

A particularly active application area is the modeling of human induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs), which are increasingly used in regenerative medicine and drug testing as experimentally accessible but highly variable cardiac models. This setting intro duces additional mathematical challenges related to tissue heterogeneity, variability in cellular phenotypes, and the interpretation of indirect experimental measurements. 

Within this framework, different modeling paradigms are used to connect cellular dynamics with observable extracellular signals, highlighting how alternative mathematical formulations can lead to different quantitative and qualitative predictions. Numerical simulations play a central role in exploring how spatial organization, heterogeneity, and measurement processes influence the relationship between internal states and recorded data. Overall, computational cardiology emerges as a multiscale modeling discipline in which mathematical structure, numer ical methods, and data interpretation interact to support both fundamental understanding and applied developments in regenerative medicine