# Image-based Multi-scale Modeling Framework of the Cardiopulmonary System: Longitudinal Calibration and Assessment of Therapies in Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension

> **NIH NIH U01** · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR · 2020 · $532,263

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a complex disorder associated with elevated pulmonary arterial pressure. Unlike
systemic hypertension, PH is difficult to detect in routine physical examinations and the current gold standard for
diagnosing PH is through invasive right heart catheterization. Unlike in systemic hypertension, for which patients
have effective pharmacological management of blood pressure for decades, PH prognosis remains poor with
15% mortality within 1 year on modern therapy. Challenges in early detection of PH, as well as structural
differences in the cardio-pulmonary system (e.g., thinner ventricular wall, more distributed compliance and larger
number of peripheral vessels) may explain the stark differences in clinical outcomes between systemic
hypertension and PH.
Our current understanding of PH has largely been obtained through animal models, clinical studies and
computational modeling. However, surgical banding or chronic hypoxia animal models do not fully reproduce the
etiology of human PH. Invasive clinical measurements of pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR), stiffness and
ventricular elastance provide limited insight into disease progression. Computational models have been
developed to study growth and remodeling (G&R) in the ventricles and hemodynamics in PH. However, these
models are incomplete: ventricular G&R models lack coupling with evolving pulmonary hemodynamics, whereas
pulmonary hemodynamic models have not included ventricular-arterial coupling. Given that the interactions
between RV and the pulmonary vasculature are a key determinant of the clinical course of PH, specifically, the
transition from compensated to decompensated remodeling, we submit that there is a pressing need to develop
a multi-scale (MS) computational model that can couple the short term (e.g. hemodynamics) and long-term G&R
interactions between the RV and the pulmonary circulation.
In this project, we propose to develop a multi-scale, multi-physics computational model of the cardio-pulmonary
circulation and calibrate it using longitudinal data acquired on cohorts of pediatric pulmonary hypertension and
control (e.g., cardiac transplant) subjects. The model will be the first of its kind because it will be able to describe
the bi-directional interactions between evolving ventricular and vascular biomechanics and hemodynamics using
human pulmonary hypertension data.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9905410
- **Project number:** 5U01HL135842-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
- **Principal Investigator:** Seungik Baek
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $532,263
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-03-15 → 2023-10-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9905410

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9905410, Image-based Multi-scale Modeling Framework of the Cardiopulmonary System: Longitudinal Calibration and Assessment of Therapies in Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension (5U01HL135842-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9905410. Licensed CC0.

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