Background Links for Rob's Electrophysiology Courses

These are links to information and resources that seem to come up in all the electrophysiology courses I teach. Some will be more or less relevant than others but this way, there is only one place to maintain and update.

Links to the Courses

Information on Writing

I also teach (or have taught) writing and presentation courses, but this is another topic. (-:

Additional Books

General Physiology

Physiology, 8th ed. by Bruce Koeppen, Bruce Stanton, Julianne Hall, and Agnieszka Swiatecka-Urban. Elsevier, 2023. (our BME 6000 textbook)
Human Physiology: in Integrated Approach by Silverthorn, the text used in our BME 3202 course and a lovely introductory text.
Eckert Animal Physiology, a book that has (sadly) not been refreshed and contains too many errors to be a good reference.
Textbook of Medical Physiology by Guyton and Hall

Cardiovascular Physiology

Cardiovascular Physiology (Fourth Edition) by David E. Mohrman and Lois Jane Heller.
Physiology and Pharmacology of the Heart by Hilary Brown and Roland Kozlowski. Blackwell Science, 1997.
Life at the Extremes: The Science of Survival by Frances M. Ashcroft, available from Barnes and Noble. and, of course, at Amazon
Cardiovascular Physiology Concepts a web site to go with the text book of the same name by Richard Klabunde.

Bioelectricity and Modeling

Bioelectricity and Biomagnetism, Vol. 1 by Ramesh M. Gulrajani. (expensive but the best reference book for the course and this material)
Bioelectric Phenomena by Robert Plonsey (the predecessor to our text with much more detail in computational components and volume conductor problems. A classic no longer in print but available through used bookstores, e.g., Amazon.com)
Bioelectromagnetism by Jaakko Malmivuo and Robert Plonsey. No longer in print but available directly from the web. Also part of the Bioelectromagnetism Portal that Prof. Malmivuo hosts.
Mathematical Physiology by James Keener and James Sneyd. Springer Verlag. (great all around book on modeling and simulation in physiology)

Cardiology and Medicine

King of Hearts by G. Wayne Miller. A great story, albeit poorly written, about Walt Lillehei. Available at Amazon
Partners of the Heart by Vivian Thomas. An autobiography of Vivian Thomas, the African American assistant to Alfred Blalock and the inspiration for the outstanding film "Something the Lord Made".
Every Second Counts by Donald McRae. The story of the race to the first human heart transplant. It does not get more exciting that this!
Journey into the Heart by David Monagan. This covers the life and untimely death of Andreas Gruentzig, the inventor of PTCA, but also includes a fabulous introduction to the heart days of cardiac catheterization. This is out of print but available as a used book.
Wisdom of the Body by Sherwin Nuland. This is a more general book about physiology, with some exciting clinical stories to make it read like a thriller.

Cardiovascular/Respiration/Renal Physiology Resources

e-heart Web site, a very comprehensive site of images and description of diseases of the heart and vascular system, created by Carmela D. Tan, M.D, and E Rene Rodriguez, M.D.
National Geographic article from February 2007 on the heart and heart therapy.
CV disease statistics from the American Heart Association.
AHA Heart and Stroke Encyclopedia
Elephant breathing and lots of other elephant related information. Learn what is unique about the way elephants breath!
Molecular mechanisms of osmosis by F. Kiil from Am. J. Physiology. An article on the mechanisms of osmosis.
Respiratory physiology by Dr. David Penny.
BioCoach from Prentice Hall
Atlas of Cardiac Anatomy from the University of Minnesota.
Heart Disease Resource Guide from www.aclscertification.com.
Kid's guide to the CV system (from the same ACLS site).

Bioelectricity and Electrophysiology Resources

The Virtual Heart, a web site with interactive animations of the heart, especially electrophysiology.
Bruno Taccardi video on cardiac bioelectricity (165 MB) also available in high resolution (224 MB)
Essentials of Human Physiology. See especially the section on Membrane Transport and Bioelectric Activity
Summary of the mechanisms of Class I and Class III antiarrhythmic drugs from Vidal Essebag at McGill University.
Heart cycle animation . This animation requires the Shockwave Flash plugin, and you can download the player plug-in from www.macromedia.com/software/flash.
Clinical Electrophysiology from USC , including some cool animations of diverse arrhythmias.
Tutorial on ischemic heart disease

ECG Resources

Links from International Society of Electrocardiology
ECG Corner, a St. Jude Medical sponsored educational site and mailing list.
ECG's: The ECG Library Homepage , including the History of Electrocardiography by Dean Jenkins.
ECGwaves learning site.
ECG Training program from ACLS Medical training.
ECGPedia, of course.
Tutorial guide to Reading ECGs from New York University Medical School
ECG basics and analysis from the University of Utah.
Virtual ECG from Glamorgan in Cardiff, UK. A simulation program to create ECGs.

Heart Illnesses

An AF tutorial from Medline Plus and the National Library of Medicine at the NIH.
Another AF tutorial from the University of Toronto.
AF Tutorial from StopAfib.org.
Heart Disease Resource Guide from www.aclscertification.com.

Images, Photos, Anatomy

The Healthline Body Maps, a set of amazing, interactive anatomical descriptions coupled with lots of background information. Definitely a nice resource to use for exploring the human body.
Cardiac morphology project at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK.
Heart Anatomy from the ACLS course website.
IMAIOS E-atlas, an amazing interactive online anatomy site with slices through the body in all directions.
Introduction to Cardiothoracic Imaging. This is a very nice set of images of the thorax the the heart itself. Some highlights include
Book: Atlas of Human Anatomy from Elsevier Health by Netter.

Biomedical Signal Processing Links

A biomedical signal processing course at Northeastern University and run by Dana Brooks.

Simulations and Animations

ECGSim this is the most useful and best supported ECG Simulation system, great for education and for research.
The Virtual Heart, a very cool web based visualization of heart rhythms.
Cardiac simulation web site, a comprehensive listing of information.
Interactive model of squid axon by Semahat Demir. Part of her iCell Modeling Software
Simulation of a beating heart from Charles Peskin and David McQueen.

Odds and Sods

Rob's links page to other research related groups and sources.
The Young Mans' Book of Amusement full of weird and wonderful experiments.
Richard Felder's home page Resources in Science and Engineering Education.
List of dates of birth (and death) for leaders in the field of bioelectricity. Prepared by Adriaan van Oosterom.

Organizations and Societies

Last modified: Thu Feb 13 06:19:26 MST 2025