ElastoHeart

Cardiac pathologies are often characterized by a change of myocardial stiffness. For example, some types of heart failure display changes in ventricular stiffness. Stiffness is an intrinsic property of soft tissues that reflects the pathological states. However current clinical imaging tools such as echocardiography or MRI cannot assess it. Recent advances in the field of ultrafast ultrasound imaging has allowed for the first time the quantitative assessment of myocardial stiffness in human patients. This approach is based on Shear Wave Elastography which relies on tracking at very high frame rate the velocity of shear-waves propagating in the myocardium. The objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive mathematical and numerical modeling of 3D Shear-Wave propagation in cardiac realistic physiological models and to demonstrate in vivo that shear velocity can assess important cardiac function and characteristics in experimental pathological models and in patients.