Collaborative Research: Frameworks: A multi-fidelity computational framework for vascular mechanobiology in SimVascular

心血管系统中血液流动的模拟对于治疗计划、医疗器械设计以及加深对成人和儿童心血管疾病的发展和进展的了解是至关重要的。该项目团队开发了SimVial(www.simcular.org)，这是一个广泛使用的开源软件包，提供了从医学图像数据到患者特定血流模拟和分析的完整管道。现在的目标是扩展和增强SimVial，使其包括机械生物学：生物反应如何受到来自血流和血压的机械力的影响。这些特征将允许以以前不可能的方式对身体的长期机械适应进行建模。这些方法对于评估长期结果和循环系统疾病进展的基础至关重要。虽然SimVial在过去主要影响临床应用，但包含机械生物学模型具有巨大的潜力，将扩大对血管和发育生物学、组织工程和生物打印等基础科学社区的影响。这个用于持续科学创新的网络基础设施(CSSI)项目将开发并公开发布一套新的多保真模拟工具，用于在开源SimVial项目中对血管生物力学和机械生物学进行建模。该团队已经将SimVial发展成为一个充满活力和现代化的开源套件，在研究、教育和培训方面产生了明显的影响。在这个项目中，SimVial将扩大到包括将生物力学与机械生物学联系起来的软件和网络基础设施。这将使研究界能够研究循环系统的长期机械性适应。这些方法对于评估长期结果和跨多个范围的疾病进展的基础至关重要。具体地说，SimVial将增加一套新功能，将多个保真度的血液流动和组织生物力学与器官到微尺度血管网络中跨尺度的机械生物学模型联系起来。为了促进软件的采用，将提供附带的教育和培训材料，并将维护一个可持续的软件生态系统，以增加用户社区并确保持续的可用性和发展。该奖项由NSF高级网络基础设施办公室颁发，由NSF工程局内的土木工程、机械和制造创新部门和化学、生物工程、环境和运输系统部门联合支持。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Simulations of blood flow in the cardiovascular system are crucial for fundamental research in treatment planning, medical device design, and increasing understanding of how cardiovascular diseases develop and progress in adults and children. The project team developed SimVascular (www.simvascular.org), a widely used open-source software package providing a complete pipeline from medical image data to patient specific blood flow simulation and analysis. Now the aim is to extend and enhance SimVascular to include mechanobiology: how biological responses are influenced by mechanical forces from flow and blood pressure. These features will allow modeling of the long-term mechanistic adaptations of the body in ways that were not previously possible. Such methods are critical for assessing long-term outcomes and the underpinnings of disease progression in the circulatory system. While SimVascular has primarily impacted clinical applications in the past, inclusion of mechanobiological models has huge potential to broaden the impact on basic science communities in vascular and developmental biology, tissue engineering, and bioprinting.This Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) project will develop and publicly release a novel suite of multifidelity simulation tools for modeling vascular biomechanics and mechanobiology in the open source SimVascular project. The team has grown SimVascular into a vibrant and modernized open-source suite, with demonstrated impact in research, education and training. In this project, SimVascular will be expanded to include software and cyberinfrastructure that links biomechanics with mechanobiology. This will enable the research community to study longer-term mechanistic adaptations of the circulatory system. Such methods are critical for assessing long-term outcomes and the underpinnings of disease progression across multiple scales. Specifically, a suite of new capabilities to SimVascular will be added linking blood flow and tissue biomechanics at multiple fidelities with models of mechanobiology across scales in organ-to-microscale vascular networks. To facilitate software adoption, accompanying educational and training materials will be provided, and a sustainable software ecosystem to increase the user community and ensure continued availability and evolution will be maintained.This award by the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation and the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems within the NSF Directorate for Engineering.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.