COMPARATIVE CHARACTERIZATION OF THE INFARCTED AND REPERFUSED VENTRICULAR WALL MUSCLES BY FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS AND A MYOCARDIAL MUSCLE-BLOOD COMPOSITE MODEL

Two methods of characterizing the myocardial fiber bundles' property i n the left ventricular wall are reviewed: (1) a myocardial muscle-bloo d composite model which assumes the myocardial muscle bundles to be in compressible but allows the intramural blood volume fraction to be tak en into account. and (2) a two-dimensional finite element method for i nverse determination of the myocardial Young's modulus during diastole by matching the computed and tomographically imaged cross-sectional a reas near the mid-ventricular, short ads of the left ventricle at the end of diastole. The first method requires the measurements of ventric ular wall thickness and the intramural blood volume fraction while the second method requires the Image cross-sectional shapes and the corre sponding left ventricular chamber pressures. This paper gives greater details of these two methods than in the previously presented progress reports and also presents a scheme for comparative characterization o f the myocardial properties for an initial coronary artery occlusion a nd subsequent reperfusion study of the recently infarcted, left-ventri cular wall regions. Furthermore, an attempt is made to correlate the d ata computed by the two methods. This map eventually lead to a reducti on in the number of the required measurements needed for the two metho ds. (C) 1998 Academic Press.