0000000000045851
AUTHOR
Ignacio García-fernández
Inverse estimation of terminal connections in the cardiac conduction system
Modeling the cardiac conduction system is a challenging problem in the context of computational cardiac electrophysiology. Its ventricular section, the Purkinje system, is responsible for triggering tissue electrical activation at discrete terminal locations, which subsequently spreads throughout the ventricles. In this paper, we present an algorithm that is capable of estimating the location of the Purkinje system triggering points from a set of random measurements on tissue. We present the properties and the performance of the algorithm under controlled synthetic scenarios. Results show that the method is capable of locating most of the triggering points in scenarios with a fair ratio bet…
Automatic estimation of Purkinje-Myocardial junction hot-spots from noisy endocardial samples: A simulation study
The reconstruction of the ventricular cardiac conduction system (CCS) from patient-specific data is a challenging problem. High-resolution imaging techniques have allowed only the segmentation of proximal sections of the CCS from images acquired ex vivo. In this paper, we present an algorithm to estimate the location of a set of Purkinje-myocardial junctions (PMJs) from electro-anatomical maps, as those acquired during radio-frequency ablation procedures. The method requires a mesh representing the myocardium with local activation time measurements on a subset of nodes. We calculate the backwards propagation of the electrical signal from the measurement points to all the points in the mesh …
Interactive Terrain Simulation and Force Distribution Models in Sand Piles
This paper presents an application of Cellular Automata in the field of dry Granular Systems modelling. While the study of granular systems is not a recent field, no efficient models exist, from a computational point of view, in classical methodologies. Some previous works showed that the use of Cellular Automata is suitable for the development of models that can be used in real time applications. This paper extends the existing Cellular Automata models in order to make them interactive. A model for the reaction to external forces and a pressure distribution model are presented and analyzed, with numerical examples and simulations.
Automatic Location of Sources of Electrical Activation from Electroanatomical Maps
Electro-anatomical mapping is a widely used technique used by electrophysiologists to understand patient's activation pattern. The system measures activation time at different locations but does not provide information on underlying electrical pathways or triggering points, such as Purkinje-myocardial junctions or ectopic foci. We present a method to estimate the locations of Purkinje-myocardial junctions from a discrete set of endocardial samples. Using less than 1000 endocardial samples it can recover locations and activation times of the most influencing Purkinje myocardial junctions from Purkinje trees of up to 500 junctions. A simulation study revealed that using the estimated Purkinje…
Serious Games for Health and Safety Training
EUROSTAT figures show that 5720 people die in the European Union every year as a consequence of work-related accidents. Training in Health and Safety is indeed a key aspect to reduce this figure, and serious games constitute an effective method to provide this training. However, the development of this type of computer applications is a complex issue, requiring cross discipline knowledge on different areas, including instructional design, psychology, sociology, law, and computer graphics. Beyond the challenges already present in the development of non-educational computer games, serious games for health and safety are instructional tools. Therefore, they require an instructional design to c…
Clinically-Driven Virtual Patient Cohorts Generation: An Application to Aorta
The combination of machine learning methods together with computational modeling and simulation of the cardiovascular system brings the possibility of obtaining very valuable information about new therapies or clinical devices through in-silico experiments. However, the application of machine learning methods demands access to large cohorts of patients. As an alternative to medical data acquisition and processing, which often requires some degree of manual intervention, the generation of virtual cohorts made of synthetic patients can be automated. However, the generation of a synthetic sample can still be computationally demanding to guarantee that it is clinically meaningful and that it re…
Computer Animation to teach interpolation
<div data-canvas-width="460.953206963072">Aunque las asignaturas de matemáticas son un tema básico en los estudios de una ingeniería, a menudo son considerados por los estudiantes como una asignatura difícil. En este trabajo presentamos una experiencia de aprendizaje basada en la animación por ordenador mediante el uso de la modelización matemática. Nuestro objetivo es proporcionar a los estudiantes un contexto que motive el estudio de la interpolación de funciones. Presentamos un planteamiento del problema que se pretende resolver mediante</div><div data-canvas-width="460.9542195018301">el Ciclo de Modelización. Se presentan y discuten tanto desarrollo de la actividad com…
Crane collision modelling using a neural network approach
Abstract The objective of the present work is to find a Collision Detection algorithm to be used in the Virtual Reality crane simulator (UVSim®), developed by the Robotics Institute of the University of Valencia for the Port of Valencia. The method is applicable to box-shaped objects and is based on the relationship between the colliding object positions and their impact points. The tool chosen to solve the problem is a neural network, the multilayer perceptron, which adapts to the characteristics of the problem, namely, non-linearity, a large amount of data, and no a priori knowledge. The results achieved by the neural network are very satisfactory for the case of box-shaped objects. Furth…
Interactive Terrain Simulation and Force Distribution Models in Sand Piles
This paper presents an application of Cellular Automata in the field of dry Granular Systems modelling While the study of granular systems is not a recent field, no efficient models exist, from a computational point of view, in classical methodologies Some previous works showed that the use of Cellular Automata is suitable for the development of models that can be used in real time applications This paper extends the existing Cellular Automata models in order to make them interactive A model for the reaction to external forces and a pressure distribution model are presented and analyzed, with numerical examples and simulations.
Texture advection on discontinuous flows
Texture advection techniques, which transport textures using a velocity field, are used to visualize the dynamics of a flow on a triangle mesh. Some flow phenomena lead to velocity fields with discontinuities that cause the deformation of the texture which is not properly controlled by these techniques. We propose a method to detect and visualize discontinuities on a flow, keeping consistent texture advection at both sides of the discontinuity. The method handles the possibility that the discontinuity travels across the domain of the flow with arbitrary velocity, estimating its speed with least-squares approximation. The technique is tested with different sample scenarios and with two avala…
Conformation constraints for efficient viscoelastic fluid simulation
The simulation of high viscoelasticity poses important computational challenges. One is the difficulty to robustly measure strain and its derivatives in a medium without permanent structure. Another is the high stiffness of the governing differential equations. Solutions that tackle these challenges exist, but they are computationally slow. We propose a constraint-based model of viscoelasticity that enables efficient simulation of highly viscous and viscoelastic phenomena. Our model reformulates, in a constraint-based fashion, a constitutive model of viscoelasticity for polymeric fluids, which defines simple governing equations for a conformation tensor. The model can represent a diverse pa…
Propuesta de nuevos modelos dinámicos de cables de elevación para simulación en tiempo real.
La evolución y abaratamiento de los costes de los equipos informáticos y, en especial, de los procesadores gráficos, han potenciado el uso de las herramientas de entrenamiento basadas en simulación, aplicadas al ámbito civil. Sin embargo, a pesar de los avances que se han producido en el modelado dinámico, existen carencias importantes en los modelos de cables y polipastos utilizados para los simuladores de entrenamiento de grúas otras máquinas de elevación. En primer lugar, no existe ningún trabajo que determine de forma clara cómo simular un polipasto que considere tanto la oscilación del cable coo el sistema de poleas. En segundo lugar, diversos autores muestran la aparición de problem…
Modeling, evaluation, and scale on artificial pedestrians: a literature review
Modeling pedestrian dynamics and their implementation in a computer are challenging and important issues in the knowledge areas of transportation and computer simulation. The aim of this article is to provide a bibliographic outlook so that the reader may have quick access to the most relevant works related to this problem. We have used three main axes to organize the article's contents: pedestrian models, validation techniques, and multiscale approaches. The backbone of this work is the classification of existing pedestrian models; we have organized the works in the literature under five categories, according to the techniques used for implementing the operational level in each pedestrian …
Estimation of Personalized Minimal Purkinje Systems From Human Electro-Anatomical Maps
The Purkinje system is a heart structure responsible for transmitting electrical impulses through the ventricles in a fast and coordinated way to trigger mechanical contraction. Estimating a patient-specific compatible Purkinje Network from an electro-anatomical map is a challenging task, that could help to improve models for electrophysiology simulations or provide aid in therapy planning, such as radiofrequency ablation. In this study, we present a methodology to inversely estimate a Purkinje network from a patient's electro-anatomical map. First, we carry out a simulation study to assess the accuracy of the method for different synthetic Purkinje network morphologies and myocardial junct…
Inverse estimation of terminal connections in the cardiac conduction system
Modeling the cardiac conduction system is a challenging problem in the context of computational cardiac electrophysiology. Its ventricular section, the Purkinje system, is responsible for triggering tissue electrical activation at discrete terminal locations, which subsequently spreads throughout the ventricles. In this paper, we present an algorithm that is capable of estimating the location of the Purkinje system triggering points from a set of random measurements on tissue. We present the properties and the performance of the algorithm under controlled synthetic scenarios. Results show that the method is capable of locating most of the triggering points in scenarios with a fair ratio bet…
Atrial Fibrosis Hampers Non-invasive Localization of Atrial Ectopic Foci From Multi-Electrode Signals: A 3D Simulation Study
[EN] Introduction: Focal atrial tachycardia is commonly treated by radio frequency ablation with an acceptable long-term success. Although the location of ectopic foci tends to appear in specific hot-spots, they can be located virtually in any atrial region. Multi-electrode surface ECG systems allow acquiring dense body surface potential maps (BSPM) for non-invasive therapy planning of cardiac arrhythmia. However, the activation of the atria could be affected by fibrosis and therefore biomarkers based on BSPM need to take these effects into account. We aim to analyze the effect of fibrosis on a BSPM derived index, and its potential application to predict the location of ectopic foci in the …
Combining Biophysical Modeling and Machine Learning to Predict Location of Atrial Ectopic Triggers
The search for focal ectopic activity in the atria triggered from non-standard regions can be time consuming. The use of body surface potential maps to plan the intervention can be helpful, but require an advance processing of the data, that usually involves to solve an ill-posed inverse problem. In addition, changes in maps due to pathological substrate such as fibrosis might affect the expected electrical patterns. In this work, we use a machine learning approach to relate ectopic focus activity in different atrial regions with body surface potential maps, and consider the effects of fibrosis in various densities and distributions. Results show that as fibrosis increases over 15% the syst…
Simplified Electrophysiology Modeling Framework to Assess Ventricular Arrhythmia Risk in Infarcted Patients
Patients that have suffered a myocardial infarction are at lifetime high risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD). Personalized 3D computational modeling and simulation can help to find non-invasively arrhythmogenic features of patients’ infarcts, and to provide additional information for stratification and planning of radiofrequency ablation (RFA). Currently, multiscale biophysical models require high computational resources and long simulations times, which make them impractical for clinical environments. In this paper, we develop a phenomenological solver based on cellular automata to simulate cardiac electrophysiology, with results comparable to those of biophysical models. The solver can ru…
Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning with Real Trajectories to Get More Trustworthy Pedestrian Simulations
Reinforcement learning is one of the most promising machine learning techniques to get intelligent behaviors for embodied agents in simulations. The output of the classic Temporal Difference family of Reinforcement Learning algorithms adopts the form of a value function expressed as a numeric table or a function approximator. The learned behavior is then derived using a greedy policy with respect to this value function. Nevertheless, sometimes the learned policy does not meet expectations, and the task of authoring is difficult and unsafe because the modification of one value or parameter in the learned value function has unpredictable consequences in the space of the policies it represents…
Aproximation of continuous media models for granular systems using cellular automata
In this paper a new cellular automata model suitable for granular systems simulation is presented. The proposed model is shown to be equivalent to a particularization of the well known BCRE model of granular systems and a correspondence between the parameters of the presented model and the BCRE model is also set, allowing to fit these parameters for a given system. The model has the advantage over other cellular automata models of being more realistic in the behavior of the surface of heaps and slopes. The dynamics of the CA is analyzed in order to confirm that it also has one of the most important features of these systems, 1/f noise.
Control procedural del movimiento en Blender
En un entorno de animación por ordenador, la posición de cualquier objeto en la escena viene dada por sus coordenadas cartesianas, p=(x,y,z). Por tanto, conseguir que un objeto se mueva consistirá en construir una secuencia de posiciones a medida que avanza el tiempo, p(t) = (x(t),y(t),z(t)) En este ejercicio, vamos a conseguir un movimiento que consista en desplazar un objeto de forma procedural.