Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
Volume 30, Issue 3, Pages 416-429Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/cnm.2610
Keywords
computational cardiology; meshless method; myocardial infarction; injection therapy
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Funding
- Centre for High Performance Computing of South Africa
- Claude Leon Foundation
- National Research Foundation through the South African Research Chair in Computational Mechanics
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Myocardial infarction is an increasing health problem worldwide. Because of an under-supply of blood, the cardiomyocytes in the affected region permanently lose their ability to contract. This in turn gradually weakens the overall heart function. A new therapeutic approach based on the injection of a gel into the infarcted area aims to support the healing and to inhibit adverse remodelling that can lead to heart failure. A computational model is the basis for obtaining a better understanding of the heart mechanics, in particular, how myocardial infarction and gel injections affect its pumping performance. A strain invariant-based stored energy function is proposed to account for the passive mechanical behaviour of the model, which also makes provision for active contraction. To incorporate injections an additive homogenization approach is introduced. The numerical framework is developed using an in-house code based on the element-free Galerkin method. The main focus of this contribution is to investigate the influence of gel injections on the mechanics of the left ventricle during the diastolic filling and systolic isovolumetric (isochoric) contraction phases. It is found that gel injections are able to reduce the elevated fibre stresses caused by an infarct. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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