Modeling of Digital Twin

Doctors approached us with the problem of a single ventricle heart defect in a young man from Iran. He was very sick and needed to be operated upon. Doctors came up with different surgical plans, but as this was a new case, doctors were not confident about proceeding with their plans. The surgical plans were:

1. Fontan Procedure

2. Ventricular assist device with single graft

3. Ventricular assist device with double graft

4. Fontan procedure with ventricular assist device.

We created a digital twin of the actual patient using mathematical models of the entire cardiovascular system, including a one-dimensional systemic arterial tree coupled with a lumped model of the rest of the circulation, developed in our lab. Then, different surgeries were performed virtually on this digital twin to see how surgeries affected hemodynamics. The inputs gained from the virtual operations helped doctors to chart their course and optimize their surgical strategies.

In future, we plan to automate the creation of digital twins with higher accuracy using deep learning techniques.