A non-invasive method for estimating regional myocardial contractility in vivo would be of great value in the design and evaluation of new surgical and medical strategies to treat and/or prevent infarction-induced heart failure. As a first step towards developing such a method, an explicit finite element (FE) model-based formal optimization of regional myocardial contractility in a sheep with left ventricular (LV) aneurysm was performed using tagged magnetic resonance (MR) images and cardiac catheterization pressures. From the tagged MR images, 3-dimensional (3D) myocardial strains, LV volumes and geometry for the animal-specific 3D FE model of the LV were calculated, while the LV pressures provided physiological loading conditions. Active material parameters (T max_B and T max_R ) in the non-infarcted myocardium adjacent to the aneurysm (borderzone) and in myocardium remote from the aneurysm were estimated by minimizing the errors between FE model-predicted and measured systolic strains and LV volumes using the successive response surface method for optimization. The significant depression in optimized T max_B relative to T max_R was confirmed by direct ex vivo force measurements from skinned fiber preparations. The optimized values of T max_B and T max_R were not overly sensitive to the passive material parameters specified. The computation time of less than 5 hours associated with our proposed method for estimating regional myocardial contractility in vivo makes it a potentially very useful clinical tool.
An implantable rotary blood pump was developed to provide long-term mechanical right heart support for patients who have failing Fontan circulation. The objective of this study was to evaluate the pump in vivo in a 30 day sheep study. Pump speed was set at 3,900 rpm for the duration of the study, and pump power was between 4.3 and 4.6 W. The pump inlet pressures for the superior vena cava (SVC) and inferior vena cava (IVC) were 14 ± 15 and 11 ± 15 mm Hg, respectively, over the duration of the study. Hematocrit remained stable at 30% ± 4%. Partial thromboplastin time (PTT) steadily increased from 30 s preoperatively to a high of 59 s on postoperative day 20, while prothrombin time (PT) remained at 20 ± 2 s for the duration of the study. The implantation and postoperative recovery were successful, and the animal demonstrated normal physiologic pulmonary and venous pressures and cardiac output. On pump inspection, the IVC and SVC inlets were completely clear of any deposits, but there were small thrombi (approximately 0.5 mm diameter) between each of the three rotor blades and along 20% of the parting line of the two volute halves. A complete right heart bypass was performed, postoperative recovery was successful, and the pump demonstrated adequate circulatory support and normal physiologic pulmonary and venous pressures. This study was the first successful test of a right heart replacement device in a chronic animal study.
Though it is widely accepted that fiber alignment has a great influence on the mechanical anisotropy of tissues, a systematic study of the influence of fiber alignment on the macroscopic mechanical behavior by native tissues is precluded due to their predefined microstructure and heterogeneity. Such a study is possible using collagen-based bioartificial tissues that allow for alignment to be prescribed during their fabrication. To generate a systemic variation of strength of fiber alignment, we made cruciform tissue constructs in Teflon molds that had arms of different aspect ratios. We implemented our anisotropic biphasic theory of tissue-equivalent mechanics to simulate the compaction by finite element analysis. Prior to tensile testing, the construct geometry was standardized by cutting test samples with a 1:1 cruciform punch after releasing constructs from the molds. Planar biaxial testing was performed on these samples, after stretching them to their in-mold dimensions to recover in-mold alignment, to observe the macroscopic mechanical response with simultaneous fiber alignment imaging using a polarimetry system. We found that the strength of fiber alignment of the samples prior to release from the molds linearly increased with anisotropy of the mold, and the modulus ratio (modulus in fiber-direction) / (modulus in normal-direction) was greater as the initial strength of fiber alignment increased, that is, as the aspect ratio increased. We also found that the fiber alignment strength and modulus ratio increased in a hyperbolic fashion with stretching for a sample of given aspect ratio.
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