Abstract:
We have developed a finite element approach to the integration of physiological and biomechanical information into a mathematical model, incorporating data obtained from tissue tagging, in-vivo left ventricular (LV) pressure recordings, and ex-vivo diffusion tensor MRI (DTMRI). Tissue tagging enables quantitative evaluation of cardiac mechanical function with high spatial and temporal resolution, whilst the direction of maximum water diffusion (the primary eigenvector) in each voxel of a DTMRI image directly correlates with the myocardial fibre orientation [1].