Measurement of tissue and hemodynamic wave phenomena in cardiac function

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The study of the cardiac mechanics and blood flow is challenging from an engineering perspective due to the complexity of normal heart function and the difficulty in acquiring high quality in-vivo data that is sufficient for realistic descriptions of function. Not surprisingly there remain fundamental aspects of how our heart works that are not described. Of particular interest in the proposed program is the importance of "waves" in heart function, both mechanical waves in the heart muscle and pressure waves that travel in the blood. Waves are commonly observed in the blood vessels, giving rise to the pulse commonly measured at ones wrist, for example, but the manifestation of waves in the heart is not well understood. We propose that fundamental aspects of heart function itself cannot be accurately described without a wave description, which would represent a shift in the current biomechanical descriptions of the heart. High temporal and high spatial resolution imaging data (from magnetic resonance imaging) will be acquired and processed to evaluate the patterns of muscle strain over time and space in the heart that are necessary to study the propagation of waves within the muscle. Similar measurements within the blood pool in the heart will be used to show how wave-like motion of the heart gives rise to comparable wave patterns in the blood which ultimately drive the blood flow that our bodies depend upon. The long term goals of this work are to develop tools to study heart and blood motion and to describe the realistic mechanical and fluid dynamics of the working heart, which ultimately are necessary to understand both normal function and abnormal function in the many diseases of the heart.