When cardiac imaging meets computational modeling

Over the past decades, the morbidity and mortality associated with cardiovascular disease have reduced due to advancements in patient care. However, cardiovascular disease remains the world’s leading cause of death, and the prevalence of myocardial pathologies remains significant. Continued advancements in diagnostics and therapeutics are needed to further drive down the social and economic burden of cardiac disease in both developed and developing countries.

Routine clinical evaluation of patients with cardiovascular disease includes non-invasive imaging, such as echocardiography (echo), cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and/or CT, and where appropriate, invasive investigation with cardiac catheterisation However, little clinical information is available regarding the linkage between structural and function remodelling of the heart and the intrinsic biomechanical properties of heart muscle which cannot be measured in patients with cardiovascular diseases.
The lack of detailed mechanistic understanding about the change in biomechanical properties of heart muscle may play a significant role in non-specific diagnosis and patient management. Bioengineering approaches, such as computational modelling tools, provide the perfect platform to analyze a wealth of clinical data of individual patients in an objective and consistent manner to augment and enrich existing personalized clinical diagnoses and precise treatment planning by building 3D computational model of the patient's heart.

In my presentation, I will present my research efforts in 1) developing integrative 3D computational modeling platform to enable model-based analysis of medical images of the heart; 2) studying the biomechanical mechanisms underpinning various forms of heart failure using pre-clinica experimental data; 3) applying personalized modeling pipeline to clinical heart failure patient data to non-invasively estimate mechanical properties of the heart muscle on a patient-specific basis; 4) performing in silico simulation of cardiac surgical procedures to evaluate efficacy of mitral clip in treating ischemic mitral regurgitation.

My presentation aims to showcase the power of combining computational modeling and bioengineering technologies with medical imaging to enrich and enhance precision and personalized medicine.