Multiphysics and multiscale models for the cardiac function: towards the numerical simulation of the whole heart
- Speaker: Asst. Prof. Dr. Luca Dede
- Time: 3.2.2022, 14:00
- Invited by: The lecturers of the research focus Partial Differential Equations
Abstract
We present recent advancements on multiphysics and multiscale modeling for the numerical simulation of the whole cardiac function. We couple state-of-the-art and newly developed models for the electrophysiology of the tissue, mechanical activation at the cellular level, the passive mechanical response of the muscle, and 0D closed-loop model of blood circulation (and other cardiac chambers), thus yielding a coupled electromechanical 3D differential problem. We consider the space approximation of the Partial Differential Equations therein involved by means of the Finite Element method, for which we exploit intergrid transfer operators, as well as partitioned-staggered schemes for realizing the numerical coupling. We present and discuss several numerical simulations in the high performance computing framework of cardiac electromechanics problems, ranging from ventricular electromechanics to whole heart simulations. We exploit our electromechanics model to study pathological scenarios, in particular as well as for simulating ventricular tachycardia in ventricles with ischemic cardiomyopathy, both in sinus rhythm and under arrhythmia, other than for assessing the role of mechano-electric feedbacks and hemodynamics coupling in scar-related ventricular tachycardia. We also present a novel Machine Learning method that enables real-time numerical simulations of cardiac electromechanics by building a non-intrusive, reduced order model upon Artifical Neural Networks. We also present fully detailed 3D blood flow simulations in the heart, for which we exploit different levels of coupling between cardiac electromechanics and 3D fluid dynamics, ranging from staggered schemes to fully integrated electromechanics-fluid simulations.