Webinar
In-silico Modeling of the Patient-specific Heart
The predictive modeling of cardiac mechanics to accurately reproduce the heart’s functionality and response to external disturbances remains a challenging task. The need to assess multiple physical domains — structural mechanics, fluid dynamics and electrophysiology — places high demands on numerical solution strategies.
We will present a high-resolution, 3D, nonlinear finite element model of patient-specific heart geometries and function. The model includes an active material law prescribing the ventricular contraction along a generic muscle fiber orientation and a passive component that captures the highly anisotropic nonlinear behavior of the myocardium.
By coupling the structural model with the ventricular blood compartments, which act as zero-dimensional fluid representations of the cardiovascular system, we can model venous return by assuring conservation of volume within the closed loop circulatory system. The resulting monolithic, multifield system of equations, provides a physiologically meaningful solution of heart contraction mechanics for in silico modeling of medical device and novel disease treatment.