Cardiovascular Digital Twins: From Bench to Bedside
In silico technologies have greatly evolved in the last decades, and application to real cases is nowadays possible. The idea of developing methodological and technological approaches toward the definition of personalized digital twins to monitor citizen health status or to predict responses to therapeutic actions has been proven.
Cardiovascular diseases have been studied using in silico methodology, one of the first examples, either from a fluid dynamic or a structural point of view. The treatment of pathologies of the aortic valve and thoracic aorta, easy to translate to the majority of the mini-invasive treatments of cardiovascular pathologies where an implantable device is used, will be illustrated. The results of computer simulations can guide clinicians in the correct device choice and surgical approach. A key point of this process is the rigorous verification and validation step before applying results to the clinical practice.
In the future, computer models will be more sophisticated, complex, and detailed; however, thorough validation and the identification of patient-specific properties and characteristics will always be necessary. Personalized simulations as a pre-planning tool will be easier and more widely used by clinicians, patients’ communities, and industrial players.
