Unified computational modeling of the total human heart function with smoothed particle hydrodynamics

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr.-Ing. Xiangyu Hu
• Subject Area: Fluid Mechanics ; Cardiology, Angiology ; Mechanics
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397665284

The heart is one of our most vital and most complex organs. The four chambers and four valves of the heart cooperate closely for filling, ejecting, and the overall pumping function by the interaction of electrical and mechanical (including solids and flow) dynamics.Modeling these dynamics and their coupling is important for understanding these complex phenomena. While the current computational models are able to compute the coupled electrical and solid mechanics or the coupled solid and fluid mechanics, they suffer from serious difficulties on integrating all the three dynamics due to the conflicts between their limited modeling flexibility and the complex physical processes involved. The long-term objective of the current project is to develop a heart simulator with the potential to improve the treatment for heart disease. In the first funding period of 3 years, we achieved fruitful achievements, which represents the substantial progresses towards developing unified SPH-based model for total human heart function. We have also encountered challenges in computationally efficient modeling of the cardiac conduction system and valves, as well as issues with GPU acceleration, but have effectively addressed them in our recent accomplishments.In the second funding period of 3 years, we will continue to work on coupling of cardiac conduction system with muscle activation, modeling of valves and their coupling with fluid dynamics. Then, we will integrate the developed models and algorithms into workstation-based total-function heart simulator, carry out numerical simulations of the total heart function with anatomical high-resolution heart models and explore the possible clinical applications.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants