Alliance for the Regeneration of the Heart

DZHK funded project

Heart is a muscular organ that pumps blood through the vessels of circulatory system. In the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) funded project “Alliance for the Regeneration of the Heart”, we develop a computational model for the heartbeat. The model will be validated with experimental data from animal tests, and further be used for patient-specific engineered heart muscle design (see our IndiHeart project for reference).

Since the patient-specific tissue properties and hence model parameters play a crucial role on heart function, we also investigate the mechanical properties of heart muscle using rheometer (with Prof. W. Zimmermann from the University Medical Center Göttingen) and understand the fiber architecture using phase-contrast micro-CT (with Prof. T. Salditt from the University of Göttingen) and DT-MRI (with Prof. S. Boretius from the German Primate Center).

We are also interested in the morphogenesis of the myocardium sheets, and study the sheet formulation.