The Living Heart Project: A robust and integrative simulator for human heart function

Abstract

The heart is not only our most vital, but also our most complex organ: Precisely controlled by the interplay of electrical and mechanical fields, it consists of four chambers and four valves, which act in concert to regulate its filling, ejection, and overall pump function. While numerous computational models exist to study either the electrical or the mechanical response of its individual chambers, the integrative electro-mechanical response of the whole heart remains poorly understood. Here we present a proof-of-concept simulator for a four-chamber human heart model created from computer topography and magnetic resonance images. We illustrate the governing equations of excitation-contraction coupling and discretize them using a single, unified finite element environment. To illustrate the basic features of our model, we visualize the electrical potential and the mechanical deformation across the human heart throughout its cardiac cycle. To compare our simulation against common metrics of cardiac function, we extract the pressure-volume relationship and show that it agrees well with clinical observations. Our prototype model allows us to explore and understand the key features, physics, and technologies to create an integrative, predictive model of the living human heart. Ultimately, our simulator will open opportunities to probe landscapes of clinical parameters, and guide device design and treatment planning in cardiac diseases such as stenosis, regurgitation, or prolapse of the aortic, pulmonary, tricuspid, or mitral valve.

Patient-Specific Airway Wall Remodeling in Chronic Lung Disease

“…Robin boundary conditions closely mimic the physiology of the parenchyma in tethering open the airway and allow us to model severe smooth muscle hyper-reactivity and airway collapse modes [69, 71]. While homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions are often chosen as a matter of pure convenience, and we have selected them here to compare our results to existing studies in the literature [44], it is now increasingly recognized that fixed boundaries fail to reproduce the physiology of biological systems in an in vivo setting [6]. This agrees well with a recent study on growth of tubular organ systems, which has shown that free boundaries are essential to reproduce the physiological environment of the gastrointestinal tract [18].…”

Computational Simulation as an Innovative Approach in Personalized Medicine

“…Depending on the scientific question, it is possible to create whole body models for humans [11,12] or parts of the body like the human heart [13,14] or the spine [15,16]. A distinction can be made between the multibody simulation (MBS) modeling and the finite element (FE) modeling.…”

A Short Review of Advances in the Modelling of Blood Rheology and Clot Formation

“…Constitutive models for blood play a critical role in the computational simulations used in the design of cardiovascular devices such as ventricular assist devices (see, for instance, their role in the Living Heart Project [1], and the SIMULIA R Living Heart Human Model). Prediction of clot/plaque formation and growth in regions of flow recirculation and stagnation in such devices requires reliable models that can be integrated in computational simulations of blood flow.…”