Gallery · reference composition

The heartbeat, electrical wave first

The heart below is the Rodero average heart, cut open so all four chambers show. The colour on the ventricles is the simulated electrical wave of a normal beat, entering through the conduction system. A few tens of milliseconds behind it, the walls squeeze: the valve level pulls down toward the tip, which hardly moves, the walls thicken and the chambers empty. Then everything relaxes and refills. Drag the heart to turn it; switch to the whole heart to see it from outside.

One simulated beat drives everything: the sinus node, the atrial wave, the AV node, the conduction system and the ventricular wave colour the tissue; each patch's tension drives a closed-loop circulation whose volumes and valve states move the heart and the valves. The motion is an illustrative rig (walls keep their volume), not a calculation of muscle forces. Simulated and for teaching only.