Heart to heart: 3D simulation driving research into heart disease
Dassault Systèmes’ Living Heart project not only puts a new perspective on medical research but also provides a valuable tool for medical device manufacturers.
In the United States, someone has a heart attack every 34 seconds. While stents, transplants, angioplasty, by-pass operations, drugs and improved patient care have dramatically cut deaths from heart disease, it remains the number one killer. The World Health Organisation estimates that the disease globally accounts for one in three deaths and the gains of the past two decades have plateaued
Computer simulation is already an important aspect of medical device development, and it is only in recent years that the technology has been developed to such an extent that it can now simulate human physiology. Recently technology companies have been teaming up with doctors and clinicians specialising in biomechanics to replicate individual hearts in a virtual reality.
Dassault Systèmes recently outlined multiple milestones in its Living Heart project aimed at driving the creation and use of simulated 3D personalised hearts in the treatment, diagnosis and prevention of heart diseases. As the scientific and medical community seeks faster and more targeted ways to improve patient care, the Living Heart Project is extending its reach through new partnerships and applications while lowering the barriers to access.
Dassault Systèmes has been involved in many simulation projects over the years – from automobile design simulations that help avoid serious injury, to studies of the impact of contact sports on the brain. The Living Heart Project is connecting numerous great minds in cardiovascular modelling and simulation to solve the toughest challenges, and delivering ready-to-use human models in the process.
Simultaneous tests in the cloud
The Living Heart is now available through the 3DExperience platform on the cloud, offering the speed and flexibility of high-performance computing (HPC) to even the smallest medical device companies. Any life sciences company can immediately access a complete, on-demand HPC environment to scale up virtual testing securely and collaboratively while managing infrastructure costs. This also crosses an important boundary toward the use of the Living Heart directly in a clinical setting.
With the move of the Living Heart to the cloud, effectively an unlimited number of tests of a new design can be carried out simultaneously using the simulated heart rather than one at a time, dramatically lowering barriers to innovation and reducing time and cost.
The Living Heart model includes the well-defined anatomic details of the heart including valves, arteries, papillary muscles and electrical fiber network. Further it includes proximal vasculature, such as the aortic arch, pulmonary artery, and superior vena cava (SVC). The dynamic response of the heart model is governed by realistic electrical, structural, and fluid (blood) flow physics.
Influence of devices on heart function simulation
The Living Heart model represents a completely functioning baseline of a healthy heart, which can be used to then study congenital defects or introduce disease by modifying the shape and tissue properties in an easy-to-use software editor. More importantly, medical devices can be inserted into the simulator to study their influence on cardiac function, validate their efficacy, predict reliability under a real-world range of operating conditions, and even anticipate long-term tissue regrowth and remodelling effects. Existing devices such as coronary stents can be evaluated for optimal type, size, and placement location to achieve the best performance, while innovations such as leadless pacemakers can be designed and tested in a physically realistic virtual patient, dramatically reducing the design-test cycle time and cost.
For the first time, the Living Heart was used to simulate detailed drug interactions affecting the entire organ function. Researchers at Stanford University working with UberCloud recently used the Living Heart as a platform for a model that would enable pharmaceutical companies to test drugs for the risk of inducing cardiac arrhythmias, the leading negative side effect preventing FDA approval.
“The Living Heart Project is a strategic part of a broader effort by Dassault Systèmes to leverage its advanced simulation applications to push the boundaries of science,” said Jean Colombel, vice president life sciences, Dassault Systèmes.
“By creating both a community and a transformational platform we are beginning to see the advances from the Living Heart Project being used for additional aspects of cardiovascular research as well as for other parts of the body, for example the brain, the spine, the foot, and the eye, to reach new frontiers in patient care.”