Computational model of gastric motility with active‐strain electromechanics

Abstract

We present an electro-mechanical constitutive framework for the modeling of gastric motility, including pacemaker electrophysiology and smooth muscle contractility. In this framework, we adopt a phenomenological description of the gastric tissue. Tissue electrophysiology is represented by a set of two minimal two-variable models and tissue electromechanics by an active-strain finite elasticity approach. We numerically investigate the implication of the spatial distribution of pacemaker cells on the entrainment and synchronization of the slow waves characterizing gastric motility in health and disease. On simple schematic model geometries, we demonstrate that the proposed computational framework is amenable to large scale in-silico analyses of the complex gastric motility including the underlying electro-mechanical coupling. K E Y W O R D Sactive-strain electro-mechanics, electrophysiology, finite elasticity, gastric motility Abbreviations: ICC, interstitial cell of Cajal; ICC-MY, myenteric interstitial cell of Cajal; SMC, smooth muscle cell; VDCC, voltage-dependent calcium channel; cpm, cycles per minute This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Mechanics of the stomach: A review of an emerging field of biomechanics

“…On the cellular scale, the triggering and modulation of slow waves which are essentially oscillations of the transmembrane electric potential must be described. This is possible either phenomenologically, using a simple oscillating system of ordinary differential equations, or by detailed biophysical cell models. In biophysical cell models, the spatiotemporal scale associated with the description of the kinetics of ion channels and other intracellular mechanisms is even smaller than the one of the processes on the cellular level.…”

“…The two only coupled electromechanical models of the stomach proposed so far still do not yet incorporate fluid mechanics and thus the important effect of fluid‐structure interactions on wall deformation. Combining gastric electrophysiology, fluid mechanics and solid mechanics within a coupled multiphysics model of the whole stomach remains one of the greatest challenges in the field and can be hoped to pave the way to significant insights into gastric mechanics and motility in health and disease.…”

“…**** Reprinted from ref. []. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode).…”

https://researchopenworld.com/recent-trends-and-future-challenges-in-the-biomechanics-of-soft-active-materials/#

“…Interestingly, as our understanding of the behavior of biological tissues increased, novel and more challenging questions arise [3][4][5][6][7]. In particular, the today challenge faces the theoretical and computational modeling of soft active materials, which inherently involve a sophisticated multiphysics setting [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. To further complicate the scenario, state-of-the-art experimental imaging allowed us to understand the microstructural organization of soft media better at different scales [20][21][22][23].…”

Preface of the special issue on mathematical and computational modeling in biomechanics

“…Obvious examples for electroactive tissues are the heart and the stomach. [] and [] propose comprehensive computational models of the electromechanical coupling in these two organs. Although less visible than in the heart or stomach, biochemically controlled muscular contraction also plays an important role in arteries, for example, by regulating blood pressure or blood diffusion of organs.…”