Heart failure is a progressive chronic condition under which heart tissues undergo detrimental changes in structure and function across multiple scales in time and space. Given the role that biomechanical stimuli play in the onset and progression of these remodeling processes, cardiac restraint devices are seen as a promising treatment strategy. However, given the limited understanding of the underlying cardiac tissue behavior, current designs fail to successfully counteract pathological remodeling in the long term.
To this end, the aim of this PhD project is to develop, implement, verify, calibrate, and validate a microstructurally and functionally informed cardiac tissue model for growth and remodeling using finite element analysis. The outcomes of the developed framework will be leveraged to design enhanced bio-informed cardiac restraint devices.
Within this project, the PhD candidate is expected to operate within a multidisciplinary team of engineers, biomedical scientists, and cardiac surgeons. The outcomes of this project will be disseminated to the scientific community and to a general audience through presentations at (inter-)national conferences and through publications in peer-reviewed journals. Additionally, the candidate is expected to take part in educational activities within the department (assist in teaching, act as a mentor for master students, supervise master thesis work, … ).
The PhD candidate will be supervised jointly by dr. ir. M. Peirlinck (dept. of Biomechanical Engineering) and dr. ir. Noël (dept. of Precision & Microsystems Engineering) at Delft University of Technology. Our labs have a strong network of national and international collaborators in both academia and industry.
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