A numerical study of a heart phantom model

摘要

In this paper, we develop a computational heart phantom model based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of a dynamic multi-modality heart phantom. The phantom is made of a hydrogel material which mimics the elasticity of human soft tissue, and is composed of anatomically correct left and right ventricle structures. The numerical analysis is carried out using the neo-Hookean constitutive model, and the C++ based object-oriented finite element library libMesh is used to solve the fully nonlinear governing equations. We derive the partial differential equations into a set of Lagrangian mesh, and use the weighted residual Galerkin method and Newton iteration solver in the numerical scheme. To validate the numerical model, the displacements and strains of some representative points are compared with experimental measurements and MRI-based strain estimations. Good agreement is obtained, and limitations of the model are discussed.