Functionality of the cardiovascular system
 under severe sport efforts and competition

Carlo D'Angelo,  Dr Eric Burman, Prof. A. Quarteroni

VISION

Interaction between muscles and the cardiovascular system, heart rates and workload management, mass transfer, oxygenation, metabolism.

SCIENTIFIC TOPICS

The mathematical modelling and numerical simulation of the human physiology under extreme sport efforts with special focus on the cardiovascular system.

Simulation of hemodynamics and mass transport in tissues by multiscale models.

APPLICATIONS

Optimisation of training plans, management of the intake of admissible additives or the detection of forbidden drugs. Pharmacokinetics and biochemical processes in tissues.

RESULTS

Multiscale approach to study tissue perfusion and mass transport.

On the top of the following figure a medical image of the retina [A] is segmented via thresholding [B] and skeletonization [C,D] to extract a 1D mesh of the arterial tree [E]. This allows in turn to predict the blood pressure (on the bottom, left) and perfusion (on the bottom, right) at several hyerarchical compartments of the microcirculation (shown are arterioles, pre-capillaries, and capillaries).

The 3D geometry of the circle of Willis [A] is extracted as a 1D skeleton [B]: the fast flow in the vessel network [D] and the slow flow in the porous matrix of smaller vessels in the brain are then simulated by suitable finite element models. The transport of oxygen in the brain can be computed by similar techniques.