Author: Sajia Athai Class of 2026

Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death globally. With new surgical techniques promoting less invasiveness in the human body, doctors and scientists have realized that there is much more to delve into regarding the heart. Scientists are now exploring models allowing for insights of how fluidity functions in the arteries. One study in particular delineates the findings of a research team led by professors in the Biomedical Engineering Department of SBU: David Rubenstein and Wei Yin, working to understand tissue engineering and remodeling through fluid models incorporating fundamentals of thermodynamics. 

The team of innovators focus primarily on a region of interest from an earlier model created to study myocardial bridging. This phenomenon—known for impacts such as stable angina, arrhythmias, myocardial infarctions, and even sudden cardiac death—continues to be a mystery. However, with some remodeling, the team was able to curate an image reflecting mesoscopic resolution at the lumen-artery boundary. Two models were designed—one possessing 50% occlusion while the other possessed 71%. A 5.7-mm-long region of interest was extracted from a patient’s coronary artery geometry. Through the application MeshMixer through the Autodesk modelling software, two stenosis models with concentric plaques (models with plaque build-up) were manually curated. Due to the complexity of blood vessels, certain models are not sufficient. Linear elastic models, for example, do not represent the moving and changing mechanical properties of the vessels. However, these models were designed to simulate squeezing motions of the myocardial bridging movement to better understand and indicate cardiac dysfunction in patients through possible preventative measures. 

Vascular cells are sensitive to environmental changes, hence why the remodeling was tested on two independent individuals. Statistical tests like ANOVA were utilized to verify the information and see if the model shows changes in tensile strain and shear stress. The models ultimately depicted the changes in velocity in areas of heightened shear strain in comparison to lower values. They can be applied to future studies that testocclusions of higher percentages than 50 and 71 in regions of stress and strain for further analysis. This research will pave the way towards preventative treatments that can detect cardiovascular disease at earlier stages.

Figure 1. A depiction of velocity changes in regions of shear stress and tensile strain in regions of interest in the coronary artery through remodeling

Work’s Cited:

[1] Steadman, E., Meza, D., Rubenstein, D. A., & Yin, W. (2025). A Patient-Specific Mesoscopic Fluid-Structure Interaction Model of the Coronary Artery. International journal for numerical methods in biomedical engineering, 41(7), e70061. https://doi.org/10.1002/cnm.70061

[2] Image retrieved from:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heart_Model.png