Modeling the mechanics of the heart

Modeling the mechanics of the heart

The heart is the organ responsible for pumping blood around in your body. The heart consist of a tissue known as myocardium which is known to be a anisotropic, nonlinear, visco-elastic and nearly incompressible material. In order to create realistic models of the mechanics of the heart we would therefore need to incorporate these effects as well as appropriate boundary conditions.

In this project we want to develop a cardiac mechanics simulator to simulate a heart beat.

Goal

The goal is to simulate a cardiac cycle using an anisotropic, nonlinear, visco-elastic, nearly incompressible material model and compare different biomarkers such as ejection fraction, stress and strain obtained using other simpler models.

Learning outcome

In this project the students will learn how to model the mechanics of the heart as well as how build a cardiac simulator in FEniCS of FEniCSx.

Qualifications

The student should have a solid background in partial differential equations and python programming.

Supervisors

  • Joakim Sundnes
  • Henrik Nicolay Finsberg

Associated contacts

Henrik Nicolay Finsberg

Henrik Nicolay Finsberg

Senior Research Engineer

Joakim Sundnes

Joakim Sundnes

Director of SRL ResearchChief Research Scientist/Research Professor