About the Project
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia, resulting in chaotic activation of the atria and deterioration of cardiac function. AF can be treated either pharmacologically to stop or mitigate the effects of AF, by ablation to isolate or remove aberrant tissue and revert the heart to normal sinus rhythm, or by ablation of the AV node and implanting a pacing device to remove the effects of AF on the ventricles. These treatments have different impacts on atrial electrophysiology, heart rate speed and regularity, and ventricular and atrial mechanics. This PhD will use a combination of image analysis and simulation to create a virtual cohort of four chamber heart models. Simulating the atria and the ventricles and how they interact. The cohort will be used first to investigate how anatomical, material properties and loading conditions determine the response to each of the AF treatments, and second to determine the contribution of atrial mechanics and the speed and regularity of the heart rate on ventricular function.
This project will require creating computational finite element models of patients hearts from medical images and using these models to simulate how atrial fibrillation impacts mechanics of the atria and ventricle.
The project will appeal to people with an interest in high performance computing, image analysis, finite element method, machine learning, mechanics, computational science and translational inter disciplinary research.
References
Roney CH, Beach ML, Mehta AM, Sim I, Corrado C, Bendikas R, Solis-Lemus JA, Razeghi O, Whitaker J, O'Neill L, Plank G, Vigmond E, Williams SE, O'Neill MD, Niederer SA. In silico Comparison of Left Atrial Ablation Techniques That Target the Anatomical, Structural, and Electrical Substrates of Atrial Fibrillation. Front Physiol. 2020 Sep 16;11:1145. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2020.572874. PMID: 33041850; PMCID: PMC7526475.
Strocchi M, Augustin CM, Gsell MAF, Karabelas E, Neic A, Gillette K, Razeghi O, Prassl AJ, Vigmond EJ, Behar JM, Gould J, Sidhu B, Rinaldi CA, Bishop MJ, Plank G, Niederer SA. A publicly available virtual cohort of four-chamber heart meshes for cardiac electro-mechanics simulations. PLoS One. 2020 Jun 26;15(6):e0235145. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0235145. PMID: 32589679; PMCID: PMC7319311.
Roney CH, Bendikas R, Pashakhanloo F, Corrado C, Vigmond EJ, McVeigh ER, Trayanova NA, Niederer SA. Constructing a Human Atrial Fibre Atlas. Ann Biomed Eng. 2021 Jan;49(1):233-250. doi: 10.1007/s10439-020-02525-w. Epub 2020 May 26. PMID: 32458222.
Longobardi S, Lewalle A, Coveney S, Sjaastad I, Espe EKS, Louch WE, Musante CJ, Sher A, Niederer SA. Predicting left ventricular contractile function via Gaussian process emulation in aortic-banded rats. Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2020 Jun 12;378(2173):20190334. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2019.0334. Epub 2020 May 25. PMID: 32448071; PMCID: PMC7287330.
Strocchi M, Gsell MAF, Augustin CM, Razeghi O, Roney CH, Prassl AJ, Vigmond EJ, Behar JM, Gould JS, Rinaldi CA, Bishop MJ, Plank G, Niederer SA. Simulating ventricular systolic motion in a four-chamber heart model with spatially varying robin boundary conditions to model the effect of the pericardium. J Biomech. 2020 Mar 5;101:109645. doi: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2020.109645. Epub 2020 Jan 21. PMID: 32014305; PMCID: PMC7677892.
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