Modeling of Myocardium Compressibility and its Impact in Computational Simulations of the Healthy and Infarcted Heart

Simulation of heart function requires many components, including accurate descriptions of regional mechanical behavior of the normal and infarcted myocardium. Myocardial compressibility has been known for at least two decades, however its experimental measurement and incorporation into computational simulations has not yet been widely utilized in contemporary cardiac models. In the present work, based on novel in-vivo ovine experimental data, we developed a specialized compressible model that reproduces the peculiar unimodal compressible behavior of myocardium. Such simulations will be extremely valuable to understand etiology and pathophysiology of myocardium remodeling and its impact on tissue-level properties and organ-level cardiac function.