Computational modelling of the lungs is an active field of study that integrates computational advances with lung biophysics, biomechanics, physiology and medical imaging to promote individualized diagnosis, prognosis and therapy evaluation in lung diseases. The complex and hierarchical architecture of the lung offers a rich, but also challenging, research area demanding a cross-scale understanding of lung mechanics and advanced computational tools to effectively model lung biomechanics in both health and disease. Various approaches have been proposed to study different aspects of respiration, ranging from compartmental to discrete micromechanical and continuum representations of the lungs. This article reviews several developments in computational lung modelling and how they are integrated with preclinical and clinical data. We begin with a description of lung anatomy and how different tissue components across multiple length scales affect lung mechanics at the organ level. We then review common physiological and imaging data acquisition methods used to inform modelling efforts. Building on these reviews, we next present a selection of model-based paradigms that integrate data acquisitions with modelling to understand, simulate and predict lung dynamics in health and disease. Finally, we highlight possible future directions where computational modelling can improve our understanding of the structure–function relationship in the lung.

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In-vivo estimation of mechanical properties of the myocardium is essential for patient-specific diagnosis and prognosis of cardiac disease involving myocardial remodeling, including myocardial infarction and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Current approaches use time-consuming finite-element (FE) inverse methods that involve reconstructing and meshing the heart geometry, imposing measured loading, and conducting computationally expensive iterative FE simulations. In this paper, we propose a machine learning (ML) model that feasibly and accurately predicts passive myocardial properties directly from select geometric, architectural, and hemodynamic measures, thus bypassing exhaustive steps commonly required in cardiac FE inverse problems. Geometric and fiber-orientation features were chosen to be readily obtainable from standard cardiac imaging protocols. The end-diastolic pressure-volume relationship (EDPVR), which can be obtained using a single-point pressure-volume measurement, was used as a hemodynamic (loading) feature. A comprehensive ML training dataset in the geometry-architecture-loading space was generated, including a wide variety of partially synthesized rodent heart geometry and myofiber helicity possibilities, and a broad range of EDPVRs obtained using forward FE simulations. Latin hypercube sampling was used to create 2500 examples for training, validation, and testing. A multi-layer feed-forward neural network (MFNN) was used as a deep learning agent to train the ML model. The model showed excellent performance in predicting stiffness parameters $$a_f$$ a f and $$b_f$$ b f associated with fiber direction ($$R^2_{a_f}=99.471\%$$ R a f 2 = 99.471 % and $$R^2_{b_f}=92.837\%$$ R b f 2 = 92.837 % ). After conducting permutation feature importance analysis, the ML performance further improved for $$b_f$$ b f ($$R^2_{b_f}=96.240\%$$ R b f 2 = 96.240 % ), and the left ventricular volume and endocardial area were found to be the most critical geometric features for accurate predictions. The ML model predictions were evaluated further in two cases: (i) rat-specific stiffness data measured using ex-vivo mechanical testing, and (ii) patient-specific estimation using FE inverse modeling. Excellent agreements with ML predictions were found for both cases. The trained ML model offers a feasible technology to estimate patient-specific myocardial properties, thus, bridging the gap between EDPVR, as a confounded organ-level metric for tissue stiffness, and intrinsic tissue-level properties. These properties provide incremental information relative to traditional organ-level indices for cardiac function, improving the clinical assessment and prognosis of cardiac diseases.

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Calculating cardiac strains through speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) has shown promise as prognostic markers linked to functional indices and disease outcomes. However, the presence of acoustic shadowing often challenges the accuracy of STE in small animals such as rodents. The shadowing arises due to the complex anatomy of rodents, with operator dexterity playing a significant role in image quality. The effects of the semi-transparent shadows are further exacerbated in right ventricular (RV) imaging due to the thinness and rapid motion of the RV free wall (RVFW). The movement of the RVFW across the shadows distorts speckle tracking and produces unnatural and non-physical strains. The objective of this study was to minimize the effects of shadowing on STE by distinguishing "out-of-shadow" motion and identifying speckles in and out of shadow. Parasternal 2D echocardiography was performed, and short-axis B-mode (SA) images of the RVFW were acquired for a rodent model of pulmonary hypertension (n = 1). Following image acquisition, a denoising algorithm using edge-enhancing anisotropic diffusion (EED) was implemented, and the ensuing effects on strain analysis were visualized using a custom STE pipeline. Speckles in the shadowed regions were identified through a correlation between the filtered image and the original acquisition. Thus, pixel movement across the boundary was identified by enhancing the distinction between the shadows and the cardiac wall, and non-physical strains were suppressed. The strains obtained through STE showed expected patterns with enhanced circumferential contractions in the central region of the RVFW in contrast to smaller and nearly uniform strains derived from the unprocessed images.