A whole-heart model of multiscale soft tissue mechanics and fluid structure interaction for clinical applications (Whole-Heart-FSI)

Lead Research Organisation: University of Glasgow
Department Name: School of Mathematics & Statistics

Abstract

Heart disease is the leading cause of disability and death in the UK and worldwide, resulting in enormous health care costs. Risk prediction on an individual patient basis is imperfect. Advanced medical development has already saved many lives, particularly in systolic heart failure. However, there is currently no treatment option for diastolic heart failure (with preserved ejection fraction) due to its complexity of multiple mechanisms and co-modality. Structural heart diseases, such as myocardial infarction (MI- commonly known as heart attack) and mitral regurgitation (MR, a leakage of blood through the mitral valve to left atrium in systole), where biomechanical factors are crucial, are often precursors to heart failure. MI can eventually lead to dilated heart failure despite immediate treatments post-MI. MR can induce pulmonary hypertension and oedema and subsequently, right heart overload and heart failure. The grand challenge is for these situations the heart simply cannot be modelled as an isolated left ventricle (as in most of the current studies); flow-structure interaction (FSI), heart-valve interaction, multiscale soft tissue mechanics, and tissue growth and remodelling (G&R) all play important roles in the progression of the structural diseases.

This project is set up to meet this challenge by delivering a multiscale computational framework to include Whole-Heart FSI with G&R. Making use of the novel mathematical tools (constitutive laws, G&R, upscaling and statistical inference) developed by SofTMech, I will build a realistic four-chamber heart model that include heart-valve, chamber-chamber, heart-blood, and heart-circulation interactions, which will be powerful enough to model MI, MR and their pathological consequences. This work will be in close collaboration with my clinical, industrial and academic collaborators. The model will quantify which factors lead to adverse G&R and what variations are to be expected as the disease progresses. We will also identify significant biomechanical markers (e.g. constitutive parameters, energy indices, stress/strain evolution). The predictive values of these biomechanical parameters will be assessed against other established predictors of adverse remodellings, such as duration of ischaemia, final coronary flow grade after a primary percutaneous coronary intervention, and microvascular obstruction revealed by MRI. Thus, this project will generate new testable hypotheses and will be a significant step up towards more consistent decision-support for clinicians, since increasingly the pace and complexity of medical advances outstrip the ability of individual clinicians to cope with. Due to the statistical emulation and uncertainty quantification built into the project, the model predictions will be fast and quantified with error bounds on the outcome of alternative treatments. Consequently, we will also address the critical aspect of convincing clinicians that information obtained from simulations will be correct and relevant to their daily practice. The proposed research is right within the Healthcare Technologies "Optimising Treatment" and "Developing Future Therapies" priority areas, as well as targeting "New Connections from Mathematical Sciences", and "Statistics and Applied Probability" of Mathematical Sciences.

Planned Impact

Academic impact: This research, combining whole-heart multiscale modelling and fast emulation, will lead to a translational framework that scientists, engineers, and clinicians one day can use to plan and develop new intervention strategies. The work will also generate a valuable database of key classifiers in geometry and material properties associated with disease progression and identify how various interactions (chamber-chamber, chamber- valve, chamber-circulation) affect the heart function and stress/strain distributions, what drives the growth law, which parameters are strongly associated with eventual heart failure, and where we should focus our attention on in terms of treatment and prevention. For example, this heuristic approach will enable clinical scientists to study the effects of abnormalities of remote vessels of the circulation networks (which may be easier to monitor) to the heart function, and vice versa, or for companies to design better grafts that will reduce the compliance mismatch between the aorta and the heart. The energy budget analysis of the FSI within the heart will provide useful scalar measures for the complex 3D dynamic fluid fields, and thus, quantify interventions associated with the minimum energy dissipation. Importantly, we will build novel emulators to speed up the modelling process and assess model uncertainties, and move towards real-time clinical-support systems. This project will broaden the research base of SofTMech by both implementing and expanding the models developed for the left ventricle and provide multidisciplinary training for two RAs, as well as for PhD students.

Socio-Economic impact: The project will improve the quality of healthcare in the UK and beyond, and enhance the UK's global competitiveness by addressing the most important healthcare problems. Heart disease is the leading killer in the world, responsible for 30% of all deaths each year. MI is a leading cause of premature morbidity and mortality worldwide. Determining which patients will experience heart failure and sudden cardiac death after an acute MI is notoriously difficult for clinicians. The occurrence of MR increases with age (up to 10% of the population aged over 75), the burden of MR is likely to increase significantly in the future due to the ageing population. Severe MR leads to dilatation and failure of the left ventricle (LV), enlargement of the left atrium (LA), atrial fibrillation, pulmonary hypertension, stroke and even sudden death. This poses severe economic and medical challenges for the UK healthcare system. The research will generate a range of new mathematical and computational models for studying some common heart diseases. For example, developing predictive and quantitative models of healing processes post-MI will facilitate translational medical research to enhance diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. By developing test- and data-based modelling, we will examine how mitral dysfunction affects the function of the heart through FSI and the energy budget, and which parameters are strongly associated with adverse remodelling due to MR leading to heart failure. This fundamental research will significantly advance our understanding of disease pathogenesis, diagnosis and responses to therapy, and hence move clinical research forward.

Whole-Heart FSI will be directly supported by Terumo Aortic, GSK, Dassault Systemes Simulia, NHS Scotland, Scottish Health Innovations Ltd, hospitals (Berry and Danton), SofTMech, the Medical University of Graz, Kings College of London, and Ecole Polytechnique. It will embark on extensive networking activities and expand cutting-edge heart research in the UK.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Title Optimizing Cardio-Mechanic Models for Diagnosis and Treatment of Heart Disease 
Description Video summarising the main findings and potential impact of the paper Lazarus, A., Gao, H. , Luo, X. and Husmeier, D. (2022) Improving cardio-mechanic inference by combining in vivo strain data with ex vivo volume-pressure data. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics), 71(4), pp. 906-931. (doi: 10.1111/rssc.12560) 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact The impact is described in the video itself. 
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W79XGCXH6Sg
 
Description Our research has delivered substantial advancements across various facets of cardiovascular science, reflecting comprehensive progress in heart modelling and analysis:

1. Growth & Remodelling: Our innovative theory allows the growth tensor to be defined in the current loaded configuration, in alignment with experimental observations on residual strain. This theory has been further validated through imaging of an infarcted human heart, marking a pioneering effort in tracking the disease's natural history. Our findings have been disseminated in BMMB (Zhuan & Luo 2021) and CBM (Li et al. 2021). Additionally, we developed a novel framework for modelling pathological cardiac growth and remodelling, leveraging constrained mixture theory with an updated reference configuration. This approach integrates adaptations of various biological constituents under pathological conditions, successfully capturing different maladaptive growth and remodelling phenotypes of the left ventricle.Our findings have been disseminated in Acta Biomaterialia (2023).

2. Heart Model Enhancements:
- We expanded the left ventricle model to include the mitral valve and left atrium models, connected with the pulmonary circulation. This integrated model, developed in collaboration with consultant cardiac surgeon Mark Danton, has yielded new insights into the heart's subsystems, with findings presented at various conferences and published in BMMB (Feng et al. 2021).
- Our comprehensive whole-heart model, featuring patient-specific geometry and detailed myocardial fibre structure, has proven its capability in simulating realistic haemodynamics and mechanical heart wall behaviour. This advancement demonstrates the model's ability to capture the intricate dynamics of heart function.
- Building on this, we developed a state-of-the-art 4-chamber heart model that incorporates all heart valves and employs advanced fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis. This latest development enhances our ability to simulate the complex dynamics of the entire heart with high precision. Our analysis of valve annular dynamics has revealed its crucial role in the heart's filling and emptying processes, while our studies on the pericardium's impact on atrial wall deformations and atrioventricular plane movements have provided vital insights into the mechanical efficiency of the heart and the significant influence of the pericardium on cardiac mechanics. This work provides a comprehensive framework for modelling left-right heart interactions.

3. Cardiac Perfusion: Our modelling of cardiac perfusion with improved computational efficiency has led to the development of novel numerical methods. Collaborations with experts across institutions have resulted in a coupled coronary vessel network and poroelastic myocardium model, facilitating a two-way feedback mechanism in cardiac perfusion. These contributions have been published in IJNMBE (Richardson et al. 2021) and CMAME (Thekkethil et al. 2021).

4. Fibre-Structure: Investigating the impact of myofibre architecture on ventricular pump function, we utilised a neonatal porcine heart model to demonstrate realistic fibre dispersion, accurately modelled using a rule-based method. Our studies have shown how fibre dispersion influences myocardial mechanics, significantly affecting both diastolic filling and systolic contraction.

5. Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI): We conducted a detailed energy budget analysis of FSI, uncovering new mechanisms for self-excited oscillation relevant to aneurysm research. Our studies provide deep insights into the interaction between fluid dynamics and flexible structures, significantly contributing to our understanding of cardiovascular phenomena. These work have been published in top journals such as JFM.

6. Cellular Model: By incorporating details at the cellular level, we've enhanced the modelling of myocardium, taking into account the dispersion of myocytes and the collagen network. Our development of a new hybrid active contraction model offers unprecedented accuracy in describing myocardial dynamics, as documented in JEM (Guan et al. 2021) and CBM (Guan et al. 2022).

7. Emulation: Addressing the computational demands of heart modelling, we've utilised advanced statistical inference and artificial intelligence to expedite clinical translation. Our innovative use of deep learning for direct heart geometry learning from scans has significantly accelerated the process, demonstrating a remarkable reduction in computational time. We have developed a novel data-driven deep-neural network based emulation framework based on a multi-scale, message-passing Graph Neural-Network for the modelling of passive left-ventricle mechanics. Through numerical experiments, we have demonstrated that the proposed method delivers strong predictive accuracy when benchmarked against the results of the nonlinear finite-element method, and out significantly outperforms an alternative emulator based on a fully connected neural network. This GNN emulator has been published in CMAME (Dalton, 2022). We further extended the GNN emulator by by training it in a physics-informed manner to minimize a potential energy functional, which means that no costly numerical simulations are required for training. We have shown that this physics-informed GNN allows for high accurate emulation for a range of soft-tissue mechanical models, while making predictions several orders of magnitude more quickly than the simulator. These contributions have been published in CMAME (Dalton 2023). We continued to explore the applicability of Gaussian process in emulating cardiac mechanics by predicting time-series data, in which the Kronecker product to compute two covariance matrices separately for time and biophysical parameters. We found that by increasing the number of time points, the uncertainties of the inversely estimated cardiac passive parameters can be significantly reduced. The findings have been presented in ICSTA 2023 (Ge, 2023), and a paper has been submitted to CBM (Ge, 2024).


These key findings underscore our comprehensive approach to understanding and modelling cardiovascular dynamics, from the cellular level to whole-heart function, paving the way for novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies in heart disease management.
Exploitation Route Journal publications, conference presentations, and open-source software uploaded in Github.
Sectors Education

Healthcare

URL http://www.softmech.org/currentgrants/whole-heart-fsi/
 
Description Our research into cardiovascular health has made significant strides in addressing the challenges posed by heart disease, achieving tangible impacts in several crucial areas: 1. Tackling Heart Disease: This project confronts the global challenge of heart disease, the leading cause of disability and death, aiming to alleviate its substantial healthcare burden. 2. Advancing Treatment for Diastolic Heart Failure: Recognising the absence of effective treatments for diastolic heart failure due to its complexity, we've developed a multiscale computational framework that integrates Whole-Heart Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) with tissue Growth and Remodelling (G&R), offering new avenues for therapeutic intervention. 3. Creating a Comprehensive Heart Model: Our realistic four-chamber heart model captures critical interactions within the heart. It serves as a vital tool for understanding and simulating conditions such as mitral infarction and regurgitation, enhancing our grasp of their impacts. 4. Fostering Collaboration: The project has benefited from the collaboration with clinical, industrial, and academic partners, enriching our model with diverse expertise and ensuring its relevance to real-world applications. 5. Supporting Clinical Decisions: Our model has generated new hypotheses and may provide a robust decision-support tool, helping clinicians navigate the complexities of modern medical advances and enabling more personalised patient care. 6. Delivering Rapid and Accurate Predictions: With statistical emulation and uncertainty quantification embedded, our models can be further developed to deliver quick, reliable predictions with clear error bounds on different treatment outcomes, crucial for effective patient-specific treatment planning.
First Year Of Impact 2023
Sector Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Healthcare,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology
Impact Types Economic

 
Description A modelling study of right ventricular function in repaired tetralogy of fallot for predicting outcome and impact of pulmonary valve replacement
Amount £185,505 (GBP)
Funding ID PG/22/10930 
Organisation British Heart Foundation (BHF) 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country United Kingdom
Start 08/2022 
End 10/2025
 
Description EPSRC IAA project "Cardiac endotypes in COVID-19: quantification and mechanisms of cardiac injury"
Amount £109,400 (GBP)
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2020 
End 12/2020
 
Title Cardiac Modelling with dispersed myofibre and collagen structures 
Description It is the accompanying dataset and model the paper "modelling of fibre dispersion and its effects on cardiac mechanics from diastole to systole", accepted in the Journal of Engineering Mathematics. It implements two different fibre dispersion models within two ventricular finite element models: a bi-ventricular rabbit heart and a human left ventricular model. 
Type Of Material Computer model/algorithm 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact This study highlights the importance of fibre dispersion in cardiac mechanics, and for the first time to investigate how to incorporate a complex fibre dispersion distribution into a cardiac mechanics model. This work has been presented in the Living Heart Project Seminar, and we are working with the Virtual Human Team from Dassault System to implement it in the Living Heart Project. 
URL https://github.com/HaoGao/DispersedFibresMyocardiumModelling
 
Title Data From: Emulation of Cardiac Mechanics using Graph Neural Networks 
Description Contains simulation results of the forward displacement from beginning to end-diastole for approximately 3000 synthetically generated left ventricle geometries. The simulation results are split into training, validation and test data. The data is described in detail in a forthcoming publication in Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering - further information will be provided upon publication. A GitHub repository will also be made available, with code for processing the simulation data and training a Graph Neural Network emulator. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/record/7075054
 
Title Energetics of a collapsible channel flow with a nonlinear fluid-beam model 
Description Data for figures in 'Energetics of a collapsible channel flow with a nonlinear fluid-beam model' 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL http://researchdata.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/1112
 
Title Fibre Dispersion Myocardial Mechanics 
Description It contains the computational models for the following two papers 1. Guan, D., Mei, Y., Xu, L., Cai, L., Luo, X., & Gao, H. (2022). Effects of dispersed fibres in myocardial mechanics, Part I: passive response. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 19(4), 3972-3993. 2. Guan, D., Wang, Y., Xu, L., Cai, L., Luo, X., & Gao, H. (2022). Effects of dispersed fibres in myocardial mechanics, Part II: active response. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 19(4), 4101-4119. Published Year: 2022 
Type Of Material Computer model/algorithm 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact This work has attracted interest from the Virtual Human Team from Dassault System. It will further improve the cardiac modelling by including detailed fibre dispersion, in particular in fibrosis modelling. 
URL https://github.com/HaoGao/FibreDispersionMyocardialMechanics
 
Title FibreGeneration-LDDMM 
Description We develop a procedure to map an ex vivo DT-MRI dataset into a porcine bi-ventricle model, all model data and algorithms are included. The companion paper is being accepted in Royal Society Open Science (http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/211485/). 
Type Of Material Computer model/algorithm 
Year Produced 2019 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact The Abaqus LivingHeart Team was very interested in this approach and has been trying to deploy the framework within the LivingHeart Project. 
URL https://github.com/HaoGao/FibreGeneration-LDDMM
 
Title Flow-induced surface instabilities in a flexible-walled channel with a heavy wall 
Description Supporting data for 'Flow-induced surface instabilities in a flexiblewalled channel with a heavy wall' 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL http://researchdata.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/1232
 
Title GlasgowHeart: A Magnetic Resonance Imaging-derived 'virtual twin' cardiac mechanics platform 
Description A personalized biomechanical cardiac modelling framework, aimed at the mechanistic understanding of individual patients' cardiac remodelling in the longer-term and risk-stratification. Our long-term aim is to be able to revolutionise clinical practice through accurate risk-stratification and virtual testing. Four modules are currently available in GlasgowHeart: 1) image processing, 2) biomechanics modelling, 3) personalization, inference and machine learning of left ventricular (LV) mechanics and 4) statistical emulation as shown in Figure 1. Modules 1, 2 and 3 have been developed in MATLAB by the co-authors, and module 4 is programmed in Python using Tensor Flow, Scikit-learn, XGBoost to use advanced machine-learning methods. For computational modelling in module 2, we further use LibMesh, IBAMR, Fenics for solving nonlinear systems, Visit and Paraview for 3D visualization. Module 2 can also work with other commercial packages for biomechanics simulations (ABAQUS, FEAP). 
Type Of Material Computer model/algorithm 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact This framework has been developed over the last ten years and contributed to various projects and funding applications. Recently it was presented in SCMR 2021 conference in the open-source software demo session. 
URL https://github.com/HaoGao/GlasgowHeart
 
Title Multiple Steady and Oscillatory Solutions in a Collapsible Channel Flow 
Description  
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL http://researchdata.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/1165
 
Description MV modelling with Dr Pierre-Frederic Villard from Univeristy of Lorriane 
Organisation University of Lorraine
Country France 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution I met Dr Pierre-Frederic Villard last summer 2023 and we had a lot of discussions on mitral valve modelling at that time. In December, Dr Pierre-Frederic Villard invited me to University of Lorriane to work together on MV modelling with Fluid structure interaction. I spent 3 weeks last December with Dr Pierre-Frederic and we are planning to compare different FSI simulation approaches with experimental data acquisited from his group.
Collaborator Contribution Dr Pierre-Frederic Villard obtained the visiting professor funding to allow me spending three weeks in his group, and he is providing ex vivo experimental data on mitral valve for numerical modelling.
Impact * funding from INRIA for three weeks visiting, applied by Dr Pierre-Frederic Villard. * discipline involved: computer vision, imaging processing, modelling and clinic science
Start Year 2023
 
Description New academic collabration 
Organisation University College London
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Collaboration with Dr. Jack Lee on heart perfusion modelling enables us to make use of their detailed coronary circulation model and expertise.
Collaborator Contribution Expertise and data
Impact Collaboration is still ongoing. No output yet.
Start Year 2021
 
Description Right heart mechanics under pulmonary hypertension 
Organisation University of Strathclyde
Department Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy & Biomedical Sciences
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution We will make use of the detailed experimental data of rat hearts under PAH to study the eveolution of right ventricular growth and remodelling. New growth & remodelling laws will be explored to understand how myocytes adaptes under pathological conditions.
Collaborator Contribution My partners will design specific animal models with pulmonary hypertension, various measurements from the organ level to the cellular level will be obtained to inform the development of mathematical mdoels.
Impact * several funding applications have been submitted * A paper has been submitted * multi-disciplinary collaborations including biological science and mathematical modelling
Start Year 2021
 
Title GlasgowHeart 
Description GlasgowHeart platform for personalized modelling of the human heart. It is organized into 4 modules, and each can be run separately. Currently, MatLab is the main programming language and using scripts for run, this will require certain knowledge of Matlab. In the future, we will develop a GUI package for easy use. The four modules are image processing, biomechanics modelling, personalization, and parameter inference of left ventricular (LV) mechanics and statistical emulation. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2021 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact The package is actively being used by the researchers from the SofTMech Centre and supports a few cardiac research projects. 
 
Description BAMC minisymposium on Soft Tissue Growth and Remodelling 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact I organized a BAMC mini-symposium on Soft Tissue Growth and Remodelling with colleagues, which has attracted more than 50 audience
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description CardiARC Zone 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact At the end of May 2022, We organized the CardiARC Zone at the ARCADIA festival, including a hands-on table with heart competitions and a VR suite in which a virtual heart was rotated moved and sliced as it popped up within the virtual laboratory. The CardiaARC Zone has attracted 100+ participants from school kids to the general public, to professionals and to the patient group. It has sparked many questions and discussions afterwards.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL http://www.softmech.org/newsround/headline_872341_en.html
 
Description CardiARC Zone at the Glasgow Science Festival 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The Cardiac Zone was part of the ARC-XR events run at the Glasgow Science Festival 2023. We had a small team from Mathematics and Statistics consisting of a couple of Senior members of staff, an event organiser, and few Research Associates and PhD students running our event. XR is a cutting-edge collection of immersive technology, housed within the ARC (Advanced Research Centre) at the University of Glasgow. Visitors to our event got the opportunity to take a virtual reality (VR) tour of the heart where they were able to explore the chambers and valves of the heart. Both Adults and children enjoyed the experience where they were also able to slice through sections of the VR heart. In addition we had an table where we had models of the heart showing different heart conditions. While visitors were queueing for the VR tour they were able to listen to our staff explain how the heart works and take part in some fun competitions. This is the second time we have run this event and we repeated it because of the enthusiasm and feedback from the 2022 Arcadia event. Feedback from this event was also very positive and going forward we plan to develop additional heart models in order to enhance the VR experience.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.gla.ac.uk/events/sciencefestival/aboutus/previousglasgowsciencefestivals/gsf2023/
 
Description Computationally efficient parameter estimation and uncertainty quantification in complex physiological systems 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited keynote lecture given at the 2nd International Conference on Statistics:
Theory and Applications (ICSTA'20),
held as a virtual conference via Zoom, 19-21 August 2020.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://2020.icsta.net/program/
 
Description Gao2023_Lorriane 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact An invited talk given by Dr Hao Gao on "Biomechanical modelling of heart function towards clinical translation" at University of Lorraine, December, 2023.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description IAA impact festival 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact We have shown the research carried out in the SofTMech centre on mathematical modelling of the heart, in particular the projects funded by IAA, including the recent one on the investigation of cardiac injury in relation to COVID-19, to target mechanism understanding of both the short and long term effects of COVID-19. We have met researchers from different fields and industry representatives which have sparked some very interesting questions, in particular the potential commercialization of mathematical models developed in SofTMech.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://impactfestival.hw.ac.uk/
 
Description Interview for BBC Scotland News, 12th November 2020: Colin Berry 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Colin Berry discussing the effects of long COVID on BBC News on the 12th November, 2020. The purpose was to make the general public aware that some people who become infected with COVID suffer long lasting effects.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://twitter.com/UofGMVLS/status/1326844312525606914
 
Description Plenary talk at the International Forum on coompuational heart modelling 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Up to 100 people attended this event, organized by the North-West Polytechnic University
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://xygg.nwpu.edu.cn
 
Description Presentation of GlasgowHeart Platform in SCMR 2021 meeting 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact This is the first time to present the Glasgow heart modelling framework to clinicians in one of the largest meetings in the cardiac magnetic resonance imaging community, SCMR 2021. The audiences consist of clinicians, imaging experts, industry partners, etc. The presentation was given in the first software demo session of the SCMR meeting, which brings the mechanic model one step closer to clinicians. The meeting committee believes that biomechanical biomarkers shall be included in the diagnosis guideline, and encourage more open-source software within the society of cardiac magnetic resonance.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://scmr2021.process.y-congress.com/scientificProcess/Schedule/?setLng=en
 
Description Research visits and seminars at the University of Auckland, Auckland Bioengineering Institute, and Department of Maths, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Both students and researchers, including other international visitors, attended the talks during the visits, which sparkled questions and discussion afterwards, and laid the foundation for future collaborations.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description SofTMech Training Programme Event: Figure Making Workshop 09.03.23 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact This was an interactive workshop designed to help students make better figures; topics included figure design, taking into account your audience, use of software packages, use of colour. For each topic students were able to submit their answers and ideas to the presenter's questions and for these answers to appear on the screen. Feedback on the workshop was also collected and was very positive.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL http://www.softmech.org/trainingtheleadersoftomorrow/#d.en.910377
 
Description SofTMech Training Programme event (24.3.22): Attending an Academic Conference & Networking 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact This half day informal training event was aimed at Early Career Researchers; its aim was to prepare them for attending an in person academic conference. Having been unable to attend in person due to COVID this was especially valuable.
The following topics were covered:
what actually happens at an academic conference?
what can I hope to get out it?
how do I network effectively?
The event also included a practical exercise on preparing an elevator pitch for networking with senior academics.
Several of the students have gone on to attend in person workshops and conferences.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL http://www.softmech.org/trainingtheleadersoftomorrow/#d.en.835979
 
Description SofTMech Training Programme: Figure Making Workshop 09.03.23 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact This was an interactive presentation on how to produce figures. The topics covered included: Thinking about your audience, tools for making figures, colour use, captions, display, file format. The students were able to give their answers on each section of the presentation and these were displayed and discussed before going on to the next section. 8 students attended. Their feedback from the workshop was also captured and was very positive.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL http://www.softmech.org/trainingtheleadersoftomorrow/#d.en.910377
 
Description Statistical inference in cardiac mechanics 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Talk given to the Royal Statistical Society local Glasgow group on 12th March 2020, which sparked questions and discussions afterwards, both over coffee and via follow-up emails.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://sites.google.com/site/rssglasgow/events
 
Description Statistical inference in cardiovascular modelling 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Three of Dirk Husmeier's PhD students and postdocs gave talks at an event organised by the Royal Statistical Society Glasgow local group on 9 February 2021, with the following titles:
Mihaela Paun
The importance of allowing for model mismatch in cardiovascular modelling
Alan Lazarus
Improving cardio-mechanic parameter estimation by including prior knowledge derived from ex-vivo data
Agnieszka Borowska
Bayesian optimisation for improving accuracy and efficiency of cardio-mechanic parameter estimation
The event was delivered via ZOOM, and lead to a stimulating discussion between speakers and participants (also via Zoom).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://rss.org.uk/training-events/events/statistical-inference-in-cardiovascular-modelling/#eventov...
 
Description Talk at 9th International Biofluid Mechanics And Vascular Mechanobiology Symposium 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Maintain the tradition of excellence and the spirit of the International Bio-fluid Mechanics and Vascular Mechano-Biology Symposia that have evolved to be a unique opportunity for reviewing recent major milestones and achievements in all areas of biofluid mechanics, experimental and computational, from molecule and cell to organ levels and corresponding mechano-biological processes, therapeutics, and cardiovascular devices.

The event gathered scientists, clinicians, and practitioners from around the world to explore and assess the latest frontiers of Bio-Fluid Mechanics and Vascular Mechano-Biology, and set important directions for further research and development, and education. The symposium provided an opportunity for investigators to interact with peers, young and seniors, for development of new collaborations, as well as enhancement of existing ones.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://9thbiofluids.com/
 
Description Talk on "Forward and Inverse Uncertainty Quantification in Cardiac Mechanics" at ICSTA 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Talk at ICSTA 2022 (International Conference on Statistics: Theory and Applications) on "Forward and Inverse Uncertainty Quantification in Cardiac Mechanics"
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://2022.icsta.net/
 
Description Twitter Account 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact SofTMech Twitter Account which covers a number of SofTMech and SofTMech related grants. Main purpose to give information on research activities, event including social, advertise job opportunities to a wide audience, and announce graduations, prizes and achievements of the group. in addition to use the re-tweet feature of Twitter to advertise information from partner groups or groups the SofTMech Twitter Account follows. The account has 174 followers and follows 157 other Twitter Account. Impacts arising from the account are quick dissemination of material
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019,2020,2021
URL https://twitter.com/SofTMech