Getting started

openCARP offers a wide range of functionality which enables you to create your own in-silico experiments of cardiac electrophysiology. The openCARP ecosystem comprises several compontents that are briefly introduced here. This video provides a tour through the openCARP.org community platform.

The best way to get started depends on your level of experience. If you answer with "yes" to the following questions, please read the corresponding section. The sections range from newbies to expert users.

New to cardiac modeling?

If this is (almost) your first contact with cardiac computational modeling, section 3 of our user manual and the or videos tutorials on basic cardiac electrophysiology and the introduction to ionic models can provide you with some background. If you want to get a first impression of openCARP without needing to run simulations on the terminal, our web-based carputilsGUI might the right choice for you. Alternatively, you can install the commandline version as detailed below.

New to openCARP?

If you have went through the material suggested in the section above or are already an experienced user of a different cardiac modeling environment, please first go through our examples explaining some basic features of openCARP and the carputils framework. You will need a version of openCARP installed for this (see below for instructions). For a detailed explanation on how to start a simulation and the commands of openCARP, please refer to the openCARP manual.

Installation

We suggest unexperienced users to first try openCARP using the installers we provide or the Docker container. For more experienced users familiar with software compilation, you can install openCARP from source. This version should also work well on parallel computers. All ways to install openCARP are detailed on the installation page.

Experienced CARP/CARPentry user?

If you have used CARP or CARPentry before, you should know most of the features and interfaces of openCARP. The differences between CARP/CARPentry and openCARP are explained here. All parameters and commands are detailed in the openCARP manual.