Simulating heart valve mechanical behavior for planning surgical repair.
Hammer, Peter.
2011
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Abstract: Heart valves
are functionally complex, making surgical repair difficult. Simulation-based surgical
planning could facilitate repair, but current finite element (FE) studies are
prohibitively slow for rapid, clinically-oriented simulations. An anisotropic, nonlinear
mass-spring (M-S) model is presented to approximate the membrane behavior of heart valve
leaflet tissue, and it is ... read morecoupled with a fast method for simulating valve dynamics. An
efficient FE model is also described for simulating valve leaflets. The speed-accuracy
tradeoff between the FE and M-S models is quantified so that the strength of each method
can be leveraged where appropriate. The FE model is applied to study a generalized
aortic valve repair technique that incorporates graft material into the native valve,
where the graft has significantly different mechanical properties than native leaflets.
Results show that the graft must be larger than the native leaflets and predicts optimal
graft height and width. The M-S method is applied to fully image-based models of the
mitral valve to simulate valve closure and loading for fast applications like
intraoperative surgical planning. This model is used to simulate a technique used in
valve repair and to assess the importance of chordae in determining the closed
configuration of the valve. Direct image-based comparison was used for validation.
Results of M-S model simulations showed that it is possible to build fully image-based
models of the mitral valve and to rapidly simulate closure with sub-millimeter accuracy.
Chordae, which are presently difficult to image, are shown to be strong determinants of
the closed valve shape.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2011.
Submitted to the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering.
Advisors: Sergio Fantini, and Robert Howe.
Committee: Benjamin Perlman, Mark Cronin-Golomb, and Pedro del Nido.
Keywords: Biomedical Engineering, Biomechanics, and Mechanical Engineering.read less - ID:
- s7526q861
- Component ID:
- tufts:20847
- To Cite:
- TARC Citation Guide EndNote