28 - "Creating Digital Twin Models of Cardiac Electro-mechanical Function for Clinical Applications"
Host:
Gernot Plank, PhD MSc
Professor of Computational Cardiology at the Medical University of Graz
He received an M.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1996 and a Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2000, both from the Technical University of Graz, Austria.
ABSTRACT:
Using computational models of cardiac function that are based on clinical images and parameterized to reflect a given patient's physiology, are a promising approach to comprehensively and quantitatively characterize cardiovascular physiology in a given patient. Such models are anticipated to play a pivotal role in future precision medicine as a method to stratify therapies, optimize therapeutic procedures, predict outcomes and thus better inform clinical decision making.
However, translating modeling into a clinically applicable modality poses a number of key challenges. In particular, expensive computational models must be made efficient enough to be compatible with clinical time frames. As the etiology of most cardiac pathologies comprises multiphysics aspects, requiring the coupling of various physics characterized by very different space and time scales, robust coupling schemes must be conceived. Finally, to be of clinical utility generic models must be specialized based on clinical data, which requires complex parameterization and data assimilation procedures to match model behavior with clinical observations.
In this talk I report on our latest advances in building real-time enabled whole heart electrophysiology models, and computationally efficient whole heart multiphysics models of cardiac electro-mechanics. Techniques for automated patient-specific parameterization will be presented with applications in modeling ventricular tachycardias and His-optimized cardiac resynchronization therapy.
