Date/Time
Date(s) - 05/13/2013
4:00 pm - 5:15 pm

Biomedical engineering insights into the expanding frontiers of embryonic and fetal developmental cardiovascular biomechanics both relevant and essential to our understanding of the causes of congenital cardiovascular defects will be presented in this talk. The importance of biomechanical forces in the morphogenesis of the great-vessels, valves and ventricles and in the origins of cardiac malformations is now well established though the fundamental biologic mechanisms regulating these transduction and remodeling processes are largely undefined. Computational cardiovascular optimization models, embryonic growth kinematics and tissue morphomechanics are some of the predictive tools that are being developed in our laboratory to address pediatric and embryonic problems. These computational models strongly benefit and integrated with the in-house and in vivo fetal and embryonic functional imaging protocols; including newest quantitative imaging like OCT based microPIV. Selected studies that aim to improve the hemodynamics of pediatric cardiovascular devices will also be presented.