The visualization and measurement of left ventricular deformation using finite element models

Abstract

Heart diseases cause considerable morbidity and the prognosis after heart failure is poor. An improved understanding of cardiac mechanics is necessary to advance the diagnosis and treatment of heart diseases. This article explains techniques for visualizing and evaluating biomedical finite element models and demonstrates their application to biomedical data sets by using, as an example, two models of a healthy and a diseased human left ventricle. The following contributions are made: we apply techniques traditionally used in solid mechanics and computational fluid dynamics to biomedical data and suggest some improvements and modifications. We obtain new insight into the mechanics of the healthy and diseased left ventricle and we facilitate, the understanding of the complex deformation of the heart muscle by novel visualizations. Finally, we also introduce in this process a toolkit designed for visualizing biomedical data sets.