Predicting the Time Course of Ventricular Dilation and Thickening Using a Rapid Compartmental Model

The ability to predict long-term growth and remodeling of the heart in individual patients could have important clinical implications, but the time to customize and run current models makes them impractical for routine clinical use. Therefore, we adapted a published growth relation for use in a compartmental model of the left ventricle (LV). The model was coupled to a circuit model of the circulation to simulate hemodynamic overload in dogs. We automatically tuned control and acute model parameters based on experimentally reported hemodynamic data and fit growth parameters to changes in LV dimensions from two experimental overload studies (one pressure, one volume). The fitted model successfully predicted the reported time course of LV dilation and thickening not only in independent studies of pressure and volume overload but also following myocardial infarction. Implemented in MATLAB on a desktop PC, the model required just 6 min to simulate 3 months of growth.