Failure of myocardial tissue: Simulation of blood perfusion

Technological advances in computational mechanics allow to simulate failure of any part of airplanes, pumps, compressors, electric power stations, foundations, bridges, etc. Billions of dollars have been invested to calculate 3D stress configuration in engineering structures. Because the criterion of failure in engineering structures is generally exceeds stress. Failure of the human heart is responsible for 6 million deaths per year worldwide. Models of cardiac mechanics have been developed to analyse cardiac pump function from tissue to organ scale. All of these models focus on stress and strain. However, heart failure is not associated with fracture. Failure of a heart is usually induced by a mismatch between blood perfusion and metabolic needs of the cardiomyocytes. Because failure is associated with blood perfusion and present day models do not address this failure mechanism, there is an urgent need for a computational strategy for blood perfusion in deforming myocardial tissue. Upscaling of the vessel trees to a continuum opens the way to computation of coronary blood flow in a multi compartment poro-mechanical model of the beating heart. Arterial, arteriolar, capillary, venular and venous blood are treated as separate compartments. As a result, the supply of oxygen to the tissue is modelled. The present interest in tissue engineering as means to support heart function, and the great difficulties associated with angiogenesis in myocardial tissue engineering, calls for a virtual environment for testing cardiac interventions, so that the time to market of newly designed devices and therapies can be shortened substantially.