Most models of the heart use cardiac images comprising pixels or dots to extract a realistic geometry of the anatomy of the heart. The models that seek to simulate cardiac motion require the construction of an elaborate cardiac mesh that entails computational difficulties generated from this set of dots from the images.
Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. Most experiments associated with the study of these diseases are conducted on experimental animals and/or people, in trials which often incur high costs. Thanks to the breakthroughs in computational resources and numerical methods, it is possible to make computer simulations to reduce these costs. Recently, cardiac modelling has emerged as a promising tool to study the physiological mechanisms involved in heart diseases, predict the effectiveness of treatment, and help in personalized clinical decision-making.
Cardiac modelling has emerged as a promising tool to study the physiological mechanisms involved in heart diseases, predict the effectiveness of treatment, and help in personalized clinical decision-making
”Most computer simulations are based on cardiac mesh methods which require the construction of a good quality mesh, which has a high computational cost and hinders its generalization to different heart geometries”, explains Èric Lluch, first author of a study that presents a meshless method to create a mechanical model of the heart. Compared with existing models, this model has proved its worth in heart simulations and that it can be used as a more versatile and more economical alternative.
The details of the new method are explained in an article published on 3 June in the journal Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology of which [a href=">Èric Lluch is the first author and
Èric Lluch, Mathieu De Craene, Bart Bijnens, Maxime Sermesant, Jérôme Noailly, Oscar Camara, Hernán G. Morales (2019), “Breaking the state of the heart: meshless model for cardiac mechanics”, Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology, 3 of June, DOI: 10.1007/s10237-019-01175-9.