Cardiovascular Biomechanics

This book provides a balanced presentation of the fundamental principles of cardiovascular biomechanics research, as well as its valuable clinical applications. Pursuing an integrated approach at the interface of the life sciences, physics and engineering, it also includes extensive images to explain the concepts discussed. With a focus on explaining the underlying principles, this book examines the physiology and mechanics of circulation, mechanobiology and the biomechanics of different components of the cardiovascular system, in-vivo techniques, in-vitro techniques, and the medical applications of this research. Written for undergraduate and postgraduate students and including sample problems at the end of each chapter, this interdisciplinary text provides an essential introduction to the topic. It is also an ideal reference text for researchers and clinical practitioners, and will benefit a wide range of students and researchers including engineers, physicists, biologists and clinicians who are interested in the area of cardiovascular biomechanics.

Traditionally, applications of biomechanics will model system-level aspects of the human body. As a result, the majority of technological progress to date appears in system-level device development. More recently, biomechanical initiatives are investigating biological sub-systems such as tissues, cells, and molecules. Fueled by advances in experimental methods and instrumentation, these initiatives, in turn, directly drive the development of biological nano- and microtechnologies. A complete, concise reference, Biomechanics integrates coverage of system and sub-system models, to enhance overall understanding of human function and performance and open the way for new discoveries. Drawn from the third edition of the widely acclaimed and bestselling The Biomedical Engineering Handbook, this is a comprehensive, state-of-the-science resource concerning the principles and applications of biomechanics at every level. The book presents substantial updates and revisions from the Handbook’s previous editions, as well as an entirely new chapter introducing current methods and strategies for modeling cellular mechanics. Organized in a systematic manner, the book begins with coverage of musculoskeletal mechanics including hard- and soft tissue and joint mechanics and their applications to human function. Contributions explore several aspects of biofluid mechanics and cover a wide range of circulatory dynamics such as blood vessel and blood cell mechanics and transport. Other topics include the mechanical functions and significance of the human ear and the performance characteristics of the human body during exercise and exertion. The book contains more than 140 illustrations, 60 tables, and a variety of useful equations to assist in modeling biomechanical behaviors. Incorporating material across the breadth of the field, Biomechanics is a complete, concise reference for the skilled professional as well as an introduction to the novice or student of biomedical engineering.

This textbook is based on the author's one-semester course for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in the area of biosolid/biofluid mechanics and biomaterials. Coverge includes an introduction to cardiovascular physiology and chapters on the rheology of blood, mechanics of blood vessels, steady and unsteady flow models, measurements in circulation, prosthetic vascular implants, cardiac imaging, myocardial mechanics, and ventricular assist devices and total artificial hearts. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The book is written by leading experts in the field presenting an up-to-date view of the subject matter in a didactically sound manner. It presents a review of the current knowledge of the behaviour of soft tissues in the cardiovascular system under mechanical loads, and the importance of constitutive laws in understanding the underlying mechanics is highlighted. Cells are also described together with arteries, tendons and ligaments, heart, and other biological tissues of current research interest in biomechanics. This includes experimental, continuum mechanical and computational perspectives, with the emphasis on nonlinear behaviour, and the simulation of mechanical procedures such as balloon angioplasty.

This textbook serves as a modern introduction to vascular biomechanics and provides the comprehensive overview of the entire vascular system that is needed to run successful vascular biomechanics simulations. It aims to provide the reader with a holistic analysis of the vascular system towards its biomechanical description and includes numerous fully through-calculated examples. Various topics covered include vascular system descriptions, vascular exchange, blood vessel mechanics, vessel tissue characterization, blood flow mechanics, and vascular tissue growth and remodeling. This textbook is ideally suited for students and researchers studying and working in classical and computational vascular biomechanics. The book could also be of interest to developers of vascular devices and experts working with the regulatory approval of biomedical simulations. Follows the principle of “learning by doing” and provides numerous fully through-calculated examples for active learning, immediate recall, and self-examination; Provides a holistic understanding of vascular functioning and the integration of information from different disciplines to enable students to use sophisticated numerical methods to simulate the response of the vascular system; Includes several case studies that integrate the presented material. Case studies address problems, such as the biomechanical rupture risk assessment of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms, Finite Element analysis of structural and blood flow problems, the computation of wall stress and wall shear stress in the aorta.

The book is written by leading experts in the field presenting an up-to-date view of the subject matter in a didactically sound manner. It presents a review of the current knowledge of the behaviour of soft tissues in the cardiovascular system under mechanical loads, and the importance of constitutive laws in understanding the underlying mechanics is highlighted. Cells are also described together with arteries, tendons and ligaments, heart, and other biological tissues of current research interest in biomechanics. This includes experimental, continuum mechanical and computational perspectives, with the emphasis on nonlinear behaviour, and the simulation of mechanical procedures such as balloon angioplasty.

Biomechanics is a component of Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences, Engineering and Technology Resources in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The enormous progress in the field of health sciences that has been achieved in the 19th and 20th centuries would have not been possible without the enabling interaction and support of sophisticated technologies that progressively gave rise to a new interdisciplinary field named alternatively as bioengineering or biomedical engineering. Although both terms are synonymous, the latter is less general since it limits the field of application to medicine and clinical practice, while the former covers semantically the whole field of interaction between life sciences and engineering, thus including also applications in biology, biochemistry or the many '-omics'. We use in this book the second, with more general meaning, recalling the very important relation between fundamental science and engineering. And this also recognizes the tremendous economic and social impacts of direct application of engineering in medicine that maintains the health industry as one with the fastest growth in the world economy. Biomechanics, in particular, aims to explain and predict the mechanics of the different components of living beings, from molecules to organisms as well as to design, manufacture and use of any artificial device that interacts with the mechanics of living beings. It helps, therefore, to understand how living systems move, to characterize the interaction between forces and deformation along all spatial scales, to analyze the interaction between structural behavior and microstructure, with the very important particularity of dealing with adaptive systems, able to adapt their internal structure, size and geometry to the particular mechanical environment in which they develop their activity, to understand and predict alterations in the mechanical function due to injuries, diseases or pathologies and, finally, to propose methods of artificial intervention for functional diagnosis or recovery. Biomechanics is today a very highly interdisciplinary subject that attracts the attention of engineers, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, material specialists, biologists, medical doctors, etc. They work in many different topics from a purely scientific objective to industrial applications and with an increasing arsenal of sophisticated modeling and experimental tools but always with the final objectives of better understanding the fundamentals of life and improve the quality of life of human beings. One purpose in this volume has been to present an overview of some of these many possible subjects in a self-contained way for a general audience. This volume is aimed at the following major target audiences: University and College Students, Educators, Professional Practitioners, and Research Personnel.

In recent years there has been a growth in interest in studying the heart from the perspective of the physical sciences: mechanics, fluid flow, electromechanics. This volume is the result of a workshop held in July 1989 at the Institute for Nonlinear Sciences at the University of California at San Diego that brought together scientists and clinicians with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who shared an interest in the heart. The chapters were prepared by the invited speakers as didactic reviews of their subjects but also include the structure, mechanical properties, and function of the heart and the myocardium, electrical activity of the heart and myocardium, and mathematical models of heart function.