Biophysical modelling

A specific type of models are those based on the biophysics of the biological or physiological system under study. These simulators allow to interpret specific outcomes in relation to model parameters. Moreover, they allow to develop algorithms to solve inverse problems, i.e., those for which, instead of computing the effect of a specific cause (forward problem, e.g., simulating the recorded signal given the source), the cause is sought given the effect (e.g., the source of the recorded data is computed). The research activity was devoted to the following topics.

  1. Volume conductor models for the simulation of surface EMG (different anatomies and conductivity properties of the tissues were studied, considering an electrostatic approximation; the inverse problem was also addressed, estimating the active regions within the muscle from high-density surface EMG measurements).
  2. Simulation of an electrolytic solution subjected to an electric field (using a transport and diffusion equation for each electrolyte and Poisson equation to describe the electric potential).
  3. Electro-mechanical model of the cardiac tissue (considering a model of electrical excitation coupled to the mechanical deformation of the tissue) to investigate the dynamics of spiral waves and the effect of tissue in-homogeneity.

ERC Sector:

  • PE7_3 Simulation engineering and modelling

Keywords:

  • Biological system modeling

Research groups

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