CUR - The Council on Undergraduate Research

Patient-Specific Four Chamber Cardiac Modeling

Remy Braun, Arian Jafari, Mehdi Saraeian, and Adarsh Krishnamurthy, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, 2025 Black Engineering, Ames, Iowa 50011

Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death in the United States and includes disease conditions such as blockage of the coronary artery, which often lead to myocardial infarction (commonly known as heart attacks). There is an increasing need to analyze the effects of cardiac geometry in such disease conditions on the cardiac output to develop effective treatments for patients at risk or currently recovering from a heart attack. Constructing a four-chamber patient-specific heart model allows researchers to analyze the cardiac anatomy under stresses caused by cardiovascular disease using simulations. Cardiac Tomography (CT) scan data can provide patient-specific images of the cardiac system throughout the cardiac cycle. Using patient CT data and segmentation software, the heart chambers can be isolated, and a model of the four chambers can be generated. One process for model generation requires creating a bitmap and manual segmentation of the cardiac structures from a CT scan, followed by rendering each chamber’s volume created by the segmentation. This method can be used to calculate chamber volumes and visualize geometries throughout the cardiac cycle, in both healthy patients and patients suffering from cardiovascular disease. We have developed a pipeline to create the segmentation of all four chambers of the heart from CT scan data and then use them in simulations. These models provide an opportunity to study the anatomical effects of heart disease and develop patient-specific treatments.

Additional Abstract Information