Assigning Myocardial Fibre Orientation to a Computational Biventricular Human Heart Model

Abstract

Finite element based surgical simulation has the potential to be used as a surgical planning tool for the repairing of the ventricular aneurysm, a substantial cause for heart failure. However, in order to be effective, this simulation requires the geometrical accuracy of the ventricle. In addition, fibre orientation is indispensable to define heart muscle’s material anisotropy but creation of a smooth fibre map for biomechanical analysis is still a challenge. In this paper, an innovative procedure is introduced to create 3D geometry in order to minimise the error occurs in the volume assessment of ventricle due to the large slice thickness of cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. Also, the procedure is used to investigate the effect of increasing slice thickness of the image data on the accuracy of the created 3D geometry. Furthermore, a novel Laplace-Dirichlet-Region growing-Finite element based algorithm is developed to create a fibre map based on the histological data. This algorithm is proven to be capable of generating smooth fibre orientations quickly, efficiently and robustly on the created 3D geometry. The fibre map can be subsequently fed into finite element analysis in order to define the material anisotropy for simulating surgical treatments.