Name: Dr Blanca Rodriguez
Institution: University of Oxford
Research: Understanding electrical defibrillation of the heart
Dr Blanca Rodriguez has been using the NGS since it first entered production in 2004, as part of the Integrative Biology Project.
Along with colleagues from the Computational Biology Group at the University of Oxford, Dr Rodriguez uses computer simulations to study the mechanisms of defibrillation in the heart. By simulating the electrical activity in the ventricles and the application of an electrical shock to cardiac tissue, they are able to study how the heart tissue reacts to the application of an electrical shock.
When a heart is in fibrillation, lots of small irregular waves are propagating through the myocardium, and so the heart is unable to beat properly which in turn means blood cannot get round the body. The most effective treatment for ventricular fibrillation is defibrillation, or the application of an electrical shock in order to stop fibrillatory activity of the heart completely so that normal contractions can begin again.
Defibrillation may be well used in hospitals now, but the mechanisms behind it are still not fully understood. In order to understand exactly how defibrillation works, Dr Rodriguez and PhD students within the Integrative Biology project are simulating the application of electric shocks to both healthy and diseased hearts.
Many sequential simulations are run with parameter sweeps of variables such as the shock strength and timing of application. To obtain 250ms of animated data, 28 hours of processing time must be used for each parameter. With the use of the NGS, Dr Rodriguez has been able to run hundreds of sequential simulations on many CPUs, something which she feels she would have been unable to achieve without the NGS.
“Using the NGS does not give time improvements when you are using sequential code, but it does give definite performance improvements.” says Dr Rodriquez. “Once you get started, using the NGS is very easy to use.”
The Integrative Biology project was partly funded by EPSRC.
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