Visualisation of Left Ventricular Dysfunction in the Virtual Pathological Heart

Abstract

While there has been significant progress in the treatment of ischemic heart failure, it remains a significant health and economic problem worldwide. In this paper, we present the challenges of modelling ischemic heart failure and introduce a user-friendly software system that will be a sub-set of the Virtual Pathological Heart environment which is currently being developed under the FP7 VPH2 project. This will provide patient-specific computational modelling and simulation of the human heart to assist the cardiologist and the cardiac surgeon in defining the severity and extent of disease in patients with post-ischemic Left Ventricular Dysfunction. The proposed system will provide visualisation tools for surgical assessment and planning: the registration and display of necrotic and hypo-kinetic regions; simulated surgical restoration (cutting and patching); and finally post-operative functional prediction (volume, shape and mitral valve regurgitation).