Comparative Characterization of the Infarcted and Reperfused Ventricular Wall Muscles by Finite Element Analysis and a Myocardial Muscle–Blood Composite Model

Abstract

Two methods of characterizing the myocardial fiber bundles' property in the left ventricular wall are reviewed: (1) a myocardial muscle–blood composite model which assumes the myocardial muscle bundles to be incompressible but allows the intramural blood volume fraction to be taken into account, and (2) a two-dimensional finite element method for inverse determination of the myocardial Young's modulus during diastole by matching the computed and tomographically imaged cross-sectional areas near the mid-ventricular, short axis of the left ventricle at the end of diastole. The first method requires the measurements of ventricular wall thickness and the intramural blood volume fraction while the second method requires the image cross-sectional shapes and the corresponding left ventricular chamber pressures. This paper gives greater details of these two methods than in the previously presented progress reports and also presents a scheme forcomparativecharacterization of the myocardial properties for an initial coronary artery occlusion and subsequent reperfusion study of the recently infarcted, left-ventricular wall regions. Furthermore, an attempt is made to correlate the data computed by the two methods. This may eventually lead to a reduction in the number of the required measurements needed for the two methods.