In vivo regional mechanics of the left atrium: linking mechanics to cardiovascular pathologies

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Despite major progresses, cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in developed nations.  In order to propose new therapeutic and preventive interventions, there exists a need to understand the foundation of the mechanical and structural changes of cardiovascular organs due to pathology. In particular, overpressure plays a major role in initiating cardiovascular diseases. The present proposal will use a combination of continuum mechanics, computational methods, computer vision and statistical techniques, and material characterization testing to investigate the effect of high pressure on the structure, function and remodeling of the left atrium. The left atrium is becoming the new frontier of heart failure treatment. Despite its clinical relevance (more than 900,000 strokes/year are due to atrial fibrillation in North America and Europe), however, fewer data are available on the mechanics of the atria than are on hand for the ventricles. The characterization of changes of the left atrium due to pressure overload will contribute to the understanding of remodeling due to hypertension. This has been studied extensively for the left ventricle but has not yet been studied in the atrium.