Project CICYT SIMCV:
El objetivo general de este proyecto es el desarrollo de
un prototipo de sistema de modelado, simulación y apoyo a la decisión,
para la asistencia al diagnóstico clínico y las intervenciones
cardiovasculares, así como para el apoyo al diseño y evaluación
de dispositivo e implantes médicos intravasculares e intracardiacos.
La idea es construir un paquete capaz de simular el comportamiento del corazón
y vasos sanguíneos en situación normal, con distintas patologías
y con la inclusión de prótesis, tanto en lo que se refiere
al comportamiento de los tejidos, como al flujo sanguíneo y la interacción
entre ambos pertinentes y con los posibles implantes considerados.
Esta herramienta sería útil tanto a fabricantes de dispositivos
médicos en las fases de apoyo al diseño y evaluación,
como a los profesionales de la salud en la toma rápida de decisiones
respecto de la prevención, diagnóstico y tratamiento de distintas
patologías, tipos de intervenciones y dispositivos a utilizar, planificación
quirúrgica y docencia y, finalmente, permitiría investigar
sobre la influencia a corto y largo plazo de dispositivos y fármacos
sobre los tejidos circundantes.
No existe en este momento una herramienta similar a nivel mundial y para
su consecución será necesario avanzar en la investigación
en modelos de comportamiento de tejidos blandos fibrados y laminados, de
modelos de comportamiento mecanobiológico a largo plazo (remodelación,
crecimiento) de tejidos vivos, en el estudio de la interacción flujo-tejido-implante,
en la influencia y en la sensibilidad de los modelos a los muy distintos
parámetros involucrados.
Finalmente, con objeto de hacer factible la utilización real de este
sistema de gran complejidad y carga computacional se pretende además
incluir tres aspectos importantes: la utilización de tecnologías
de cálculo distribuido masivo (grid-computing), de cálculo
remoto facilitando la interacción entre el cardiólogo y el
ingeniero, y de herramienta de decisión mediante el uso de redes
neuronales y técnicas de aprendizaje estadístico para las
que el cálculo distribuido es esencial.
European project DISHEART:
The DISHEART project aims at developing a new computer
based decision support system (DSS) integrating medical image data, modelling,
simulation, computational Grid technologies and artificial intelligence
methods for assisting clinical diagnosis and intervention in cardiovascular
problems. The RTD goal is to improve and link existing state of the art
technologies in order to build a computerised cardiovascular model for the
analysis of the heart and blood vessels. The resulting DISHEART DSS will
interface computational biomechanical analysis tools with the information
coming from multimodal medical images. The computational model will be coupled
to an artificial neural network (ANN) based decision model that can be educated
for each particular patient with data coming from his/her images and/or
analyses. The DISHEART DSS system will be validated in trials of clinical
diagnosis, surgical intervention and subject-specific design of medical
devices in the cardiovascular domain. The DISHEART DSS will also contribute
to a better understanding of cardiovascular morphology and function as inferred
from routine imaging examinations. Four reputable medical centers in Europe
will take an active role in the validation and dissemination of the DISHEART
DSS.
The integrated DISHEART DSS will support health professionals in taking
promptly the best possible decision for prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
Emphasis will be put in the development of user-friendly, fast and reliable
tools and interfaces providing access to heterogeneous health information
sources, as well as on new methods for decision support and risk analysis.
The use of Grid computing technology will be essential in order to optimise
and distribute the heavy computational work required for physical modelling
and numerical simulations and especially for the extensive parametric analysis
required during the education of the DSS for every particular application.
European project DESSOS:
The DeSSOS project aims to develop and bring closer to
market a predictive technology that integrates knowledge and software tools
to provide surgeons involved with joint replacement procedures with the
ability to pre-, and intra-operatively assess the optimal prosthetic joint
implantation configuration and position in order to maximise the effectiveness
of the procedure, which will reduce surgeon variability thereby improving
functional performance.
Through the integration of different types of biomedical information using
ICT methods at the tissue, organ and individual levels, an increase in functional
performance will be effected and will have the concomitant effect of significantly
increasing the life of an implant and reducing the probability a patient
will have to undergo revision surgery.
The DeSSOS technology will facilitate modelling of the results of years
of repetitive forces on a prosthetic in a certain implanted orientation.
Simulation capabilities will enable a surgeon to intraoperatively personalize
the implant position in order to maximize implant life-span and enable surgeons
to maximize the effectiveness of their training.
In this way, our project will support personalization of healthcare and
lifestyle management and will demonstrate measurable benefits, respect all
aspects of confidentiality and privacy and be user friendly. Currently,
between 5% - 10% of all knee replacement operations require post-operative
corrective surgery, with clear implications to the comfort and wellbeing
of the patient concerned.
Through our developments, we aim to reduce the number of revision operations
by 10% each year, which if applied to the 540 000 EU citizens undergoing
such replacement surgery each year, will result in a net reduction of 5400
operations annually, equating to a total annual saving to EU healthcare
providers of €108million, which will then be available for re-distribution
to other healthcare priorities.
More information at www.dessos.org.
Project PROVIFE:
The aim of this project is to develop a new methodology
for the numerical simulation of Fluid-Solid Interaction (FSI) phenomena,
based on the evaluation of existing commercial tools as well as on the use
of meshless techniques, which allow for a Lagrangian description of the
equations of motion, in contrast with the more extended Eulerian or Arbitrarily
Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) descriptions of the fluid.
Commercial tools are beginning to develop procedures to simulate interaction
phenomena between different fields (solid–fluid, solid–electromagnetic…)
The application of these coupling models for the FSI discipline is still
in primary phase, and it is based on the independent solution of the fluid
and solid fields in regions far away from the interface, and the coupling
of both domains is performed by means of a third software package which
transfers the required variables at the interface (for example, the pressure
and viscous forces from the fluid to the solid and the deformation of the
solid boundary). Therefore, it is necessary to develop new techniques and
instruments to perform not only academic validation exercises, but also
industrial problems which allow to increase the confidence in these new
models and to know and overcome their limitations.
The second proposed approximation for the analysis of these complex phenomena
will use the numerical technique called “meshless methods”,
which do not present, in general, the well-known finite element dependency
on mesh distortion ad thus are amenable to be employed in such a formulation.
Among these techniques, we have chosen the Natural Element Method (NEM)
which presents, among others, the important advantage of exact imposition
of essential boundary conditions. This allows for a similar description
of the equation of motion in the fluid and solid parts of the model.
The developed methodologies will be employed in the numerical simulation
of some industrial products provided by the corporations that participate
as EPOs in the present application, such as elasto-hydrodynamic lubrication
processes. These are characterised by the presence of hydrodynamic lubrication
(that in which there is no contact between solids) and by a non-negligible
deformation in one or both solids. This is the case, specially, if one of
the solids is an elastomer or rubber-like solid. The before mentioned methodologies
will also be employed in the simulation of seals with some rubber-like components.
The final results of both techniques will be validated by comparison with
experimental data from tests performed on the selected components. These
results will be provided by the companies that participate as EPOs. The
two-fold approximation contained in the present proposal tries to ensure
that the project results achieve both applicability at industrial level
as well as accuracy and effective resolution of the problems associated
with the integration of MEF and CFD techniques. This coordinate approximation
tries to identify the limitations and potential of both proposals applied
on real examples, in order to develop a methodology that integrates the
best of both.
Consult the project's webpage here.
GEMM, 2006
