The long-term performance of TAH pumps needs to be demonstrated. Reliability tests are performed to measure its ability to operate for months, or years, without failure. Real Heart is currently constructing test rigs for this purpose. Software for documenting test rig conditions is also required. Thus, the objective of this study is to assist in developing reliability test rig software.  The software is written in LabVIEW and is hosted on a CompactRIO controller. Requirements include sampling of sensor data, logging, and alarms. Additionally, a PC dashboard is constructed for monitoring real-time data, reviewing logs, as well as controls for acquisition. Results of this study present a foundation for the test rig software. It features a modular architecture which allows for future scalability. The process of development involves research of hardware/software, establishing a reference design and to build and validate each module through test simulations. Data acquisition is set up with the NI-DAQmx API. It features automatic configuration for thermocouple, as well as custom signal scaling of the pressure and flow transducers. However, grouping of data and synchronization for logging and alarms was a challenge. The producer/consumer design pattern is implemented for grouping data as well as synchronization for logging and alarms. / Det artificiella hjärtats långsiktiga prestanda måste demonstreras. Tillförlitlighetstester utförs för att mäta pumparnas förmåga att fungera i månader eller år utan att gå sönder. Real Heart bygger för närvarande testriggar för detta ändamål. Programvara för att dokumentera testriggens förhållanden behövs också. Därför är syftet med denna studie att hjälpa företaget med att utveckla programvara för tillförlitlighetstestriggar.  Programvaran är skriven i LabVIEW och används på en CompactRIO-kontroller. Den kommer inkludera provtagning av sensordata, loggning och alarm. Dessutom är en PC-instrumentpanel konstruerad för övervakning av realtidsdata, granskning av loggar samt kontroll av datainsamling. Resultaten av denna studie utgör en grund för testriggens programvara. Den har en modulär arkitektur som möjliggör framtida uppskalning. Utvecklingsprocessen involverar studier av hårdvara/programvara, upprättande av en referensdesign, samt att bygga och validera varje modul genom testsimuleringar. Datainsamling genomförs med NI-DAQmx API. Den har automatisk konfiguration för temperatur, samt anpassad signalskalning av tryck- och flödesgivare. Designmönstret producent/konsument implementerades för gruppering av data, samt synkronisering för loggning och alarm.

Ventricular Assist Devices (VADs) are mechanical pumps used to off-load a deceased heart, primarily in late stage congestive heart failure patients. VAD employment may facilitate cardiac recovery, but most often provides time before a suitable heart transplant can be found. Lately, long term use VAD systems have been introduced as an alternative to a heart transplant. Traditionally, design of VADs has employed either displacement based pump technologies or radial-flow pumps, also known as rotodynamic pumps. A displacement pump induces a mechanical force on a fluid contained within a defined space, hence giving it motion. Radial-flow pumps impart momentum to a fluid, most often by placing a rotating device in the fluid. This thesis introduces a novel pumping concept, combining features from both displacement and radial-flow pumps. A first prototype, the VivicorTM pump, has been designed, fabricated and evaluated In Vitro, the results reported in this thesis. The In Vitro evaluation of the VivicorTM pump provides evidence of a pump with mechanical self-regulation based on pump pre-load level, much like a displacement pump. The VivicorTM pump also displays pulsating outflow in combination with an inflow both during pump systole and diastole. The latter provides potential advantages over traditional displacement pumps as smaller cannulae or catheters can be used, facilitating miniaturization. Continuos filling throughout the pumping cycle also require less pressure to be exerted on the fluid, compared to displacement pumps, limiting the risk of mechanical damage to the pumped fluid. The In Vitro evaluation has also provided further insights on necessary design modifications in the second-generation VivicorTM prototype, currently planned. The VivicorTM pumping technology is highly interesting for further development and evaluation for use in ventricular assist applications. / QC 20101129

No description available.

Heart failure (HF) affects an estimated 5.8 million Americans, accounting for near 250,000 deaths each year. With shortages in available donor hearts, mechanical circulatory support (MCS) has emerged as a life-saving treatment for advanced stage HF. With growth in MCS use, a clinical and developmental need has emerged for a standard characterization and evaluation platform that may be utilized for inter-device comparison and system training. The goal of this research was to harness SynCardia's total artificial heart (TAH) to meet this need. We first sought to characterize the TAH in modern physiological terms - i.e. hemodynamics and pressure-volume loops. We then developed a model of HF using the TAH and mock circulatory system operating in a reduced output mode. We demonstrated that MCS devices could be incorporated and evaluated within the HF model. Finally, we characterized the operational envelope of SynCardia's Freedom (portable), Driver operating against varying loading conditions. Our results describe the hemodynamic envelope of the TAH. Uniquely, the TAH was found not to operate with time-varying elastance, to be insensitive to variations in afterload up to at least 135 mmHg mean aortic pressure, and exhibit Starling-like behavior. After transitioning the setup to mimic heart failure conditions, left atrial pressure and left ventricular pressure were noted to be elevated, aortic flow was reduced, sensitivity to afterload was increased, and Starling-like behavior was blunted, consistent with human heart failure. The system was then configured to allow ready addition of ventricular assist devices, which upon placement in the flow circuit resulted in restoration of hemodynamics to normal. Lastly, we demonstrated that the Freedom Driver is capable of overcoming systolic pressures of 200 mmHg as an upper driving limit. Understanding the physiology and hemodynamics of MCS devices is vital for proper use, future device development, and operator training. Characterization of the TAH affords insight into the functional parameters that govern artificial heart behavior providing perspective on differences compared to the human heart. The use of the system as a heart failure model has the potential to serve as a valuable research and teaching tool to foster safe MCS device use.

Orientadores: Antonio Celso Fonseca de Arruda, Aron Jose Pazin de Andrade / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Mecanica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-09T06:51:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Bock_EduardoGuyPerpetuo_M.pdf: 3873649 bytes, checksum: 91eb2ac5543b164e576ca7a5e61d6a45 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Resumo: Uma bomba centrífuga implantável foi projetada e construída para assistência ventricular de longa duração no tratamento de pacientes portadores de doenças cardiovasculares. A metodologia utilizada foi a de testes de desempenho ¿in vitro¿ compostos de testes de atrito para seleção de materiais para os mancais de apoio, testes de desempenho hidrodinâmico da bomba e testes com sangue humano para a verificação da hemólise causada no bombeamento. Os primeiros testes foram realizados com uma bomba centrífuga não implantável, normalmente utilizada em cirurgias cardíacas, para a determinação do posicionamento do orifício de entrada da bomba. Foram realizadas simulações numéricas por computador para dimensionamento da bomba. Testes de atrito foram feitos para a seleção de materiais do sistema de mancais de apoio proposto para alcançar a durabilidade necessária. Testes de desempenho hidrodinâmico foram utilizados para determinar o melhor desenho para o rotor da bomba. Seu desempenho foi comparado com uma bomba não implantável e com uma bomba implantável similar americana e apresentou melhores resultados que ambas. Testes com sangue foram feitos para quantificar os danos causados aos componentes do sangue pela bomba. O seu índice normalizado de hemólise foi de 0,0054 mg/100L, considerado excelente por se encontrar próximo do limite mínimo encontrado na literatura: entre 0,004 g/ 100L e 0,02 g/ 100L. Como trabalhos futuros, serão feito testes com animais para que a bomba centrífuga implantável possa ser utilizada em pacientes / Abstract: An implantable centrifugal blood pump was developed for long-term ventricular assistance in cardiac patients. In vitro tests were performed, as wear evaluation, performance tests and hemolysis tests in human blood. Preliminary tests were performed with a non-implantable pump in order to properly locate the inlet port. Numerical computational simulations were performed in order to predict its best geometry. Wear evaluations helped to select the best materials for double pivot bearing system proposed to achieve longer durability. Performance tests pointed the best impeller geometry. The implantable centrifugal blood pump was compared with other two blood pumps. One is a centrifugal blood pump for cardiopulmonary bypass and the other is a similar implantable device. The proposed implantable centrifugal blood pump showed the best performance. But, its results showed a strong descendant curve in high flow. Other prototype was manufactured with a different inlet port angle to overcome this problem. The normalized index of hemolysis (NIH) tests was performed with human blood pumped in an In Vitro closed circuit (mock loop) in normalized conditions, as flow of 5 L/min and total pressure ahead of 100 mm Hg. After six hours, NIH measured 0.0054 mg/100L that can be considered excellent since it is close to the minimum found in literature (between 0.004 g/ 100L e 0.02 g/ 100L). As future work, in vivo test will be performed with the implantable centrifugal blood pump looking forward to implant it in patients / Mestrado / Materiais e Processos de Fabricação / Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

This thesis deals with study and design of plunger pump with linear motor. This pump can be used for blood pumping in heart surgery. The theoretical part of this thesis is focused on description of extracorporeal circuit, heart boosters and artificial heart. This thesis provides an overview of check valves which are used in heart surgery too. Basic equitations for pump design are derived and calculated in this thesis. The pump design and manufacturing by the 3D technology was made by previous results. Finally, in this thesis are compared theoretical results and experimental data.

This doctoral thesis originated as a requirement of micropump for artificial heart with using a suitable type of electric drive. It is an interdisciplinary cooperation of FSI Brno, Department of Fluid Engineering of Viktor Kaplan, FEKT Brno, Department of Power Electronics and finally the doctors from Cardiology Medical Center in St. Ann’s Hospital. FSI Brno made mechanical solutions of micropump, FEKT Brno solved electric drive and Cardiologic Medical Center gave the knowledge of human anatomy. Work deals with design, creation and testing of various types micropumps for medicamentous using. In this thesis was suggested various solutions of electric drive for micropump, its structure and function. Work is primarily experimental in nature and is heavily supported by a creative approach in creating a variety of proposed solutions. Several proposals of micropump have been made with different types of electric drives (DC motors, hybrid stepper motor, piezomotors). Finally, from the technical and economical point of view was chosen the most suitable type of electric drive and it was created a functional prototype of the double-action pump and its properties were tested.

Millions of people suffer from heart failure worldwide. The need for heart donations started the development of mechanical circulatory support systems. A suction phenomenon can occur in the artificial heart when not enough blood is available. Due to occlusion, suction in the artificial heart can cause the arteries to collapse and have fatal consequences. This thesis is in collaboration with Scandinavian Real Heart AB and follows the implementation of a preemptive atrial suction detection algorithm for the total artificial heart (TAH) developed by Realheart. The main limitation is the number of sensors available to collect data from, restricted to a pressure and current sensor. The data used in the thesis is collected on a mock loop that simulates the pressures in the human body. The implementation follows an iterative process where different Artificial Intelligence algorithms are tested and evaluated. The final algorithm uses a recurrent neural network (RNN) for classification and is evaluated based on the accuracy and the number of seconds before suction occurs. The results show that the RNN can preemptively classify the data one second before it occurs. The algorithm assumes suction to happen one second before it occurs, preemptively detecting suction. The results from this thesis enable a continuation that can improve the development of TAHs. Future work includes an addition of features for a more accurate and robust algorithm, a more diverse dataset, an improved labelling process and the addition of a time axis to the RNN to improve the time before suction is detected.

Com a crescente demanda por dispositivos implantáveis de suporte cardíaco (vulgarmente chamados de Coração Artificial) no tratamento da insuficiência cardíaca, surge a demanda por sistemas de transmissão de energia transcutânea (TET) para recarregamento das baterias implantadas. Esses sistemas reduzem os riscos de infecções, por não terem cabos atravessando a pele para alimentar os implantes; evitando também intervenções cirúrgicas reincidentes para troca de baterias. Normalmente, são pesquisados e testados sistemas TET por acoplamento magnético (indutivo) entre bobinas através da pele. Este trabalho propõe um modelo para o acoplamento por meio do campo elétrico, através de um capacitor, cujo dielétrico é constituído por polímeros (materiais biocompatíveis) e tecido biológico vivo (pele humana). Provas de conceito para transmissão de energia pelo acoplamento capacitivo apresentaram a possibilidade de mitigar problemas relacionados ao alinhamento axial exigido pelo acoplamento indutivo. Simulações computacionais de circuitos elétricos equivalentes ao acoplamento capacitivo foram confrontadas com experimentos in vitro e ex vivo, com tecidos vivos, validando o modelo proposto e servindo de base para o desenvolvimento de uma nova tecnologia. / Heart failure (HF) is a complex syndrome and a problem in the world. Ventricular assistive devices (VADs) are being used as target therapy in the treatment of HF. In order to avoid infectious due to the driveline passing through the patients, transcutaneous energy transmission systems (TET) have been developed to VADs. These TETs usually act by magnetic coupling between coils. The present work proposes a modeling for capacitive coupling through a dielectric composed of polymer and human skin. Bench tests demonstrated advantages over the axial alignment required by inductive systems. Computational simulations of the equivalent electric circuit for capacitive coupling were compared with in vitro experiments and validated the proposed model.

Durante a triagem do pericárdio bovino, utilizado em válvulas cardíacas artificiais, procura-se determinar a direção das fibras de colágeno e identificar regiões mais homogêneas. Estas características influenciam o comportamento mecânico e a durabilidade destas válvulas. Neste contexto, a tomografia de impedância elétrica (TIE) poderia ser utilizada como ferramenta para avaliar o pericárdio, a partir da estimação da direção média das fibras e da identificação das regiões mais homogêneas. O objetivo deste trabalho é investigar a possibilidade de utilização da técnica de TIE para análise e seleção de pericárdios, melhorando os critérios de seleção deste tecido. Com este propósito, foi desenvolvido um reservatório, para acondicionamento do pericárdio e coleta de dados, e implementado um algoritmo de Gauss-Newton para estimar a distribuição de resistividade no tecido. Para regularização do problema inverso mal-posto foi desenvolvido e utilizado um prior baseado em amostras. E para avaliar o desempenho do reservatório e do algoritmo de imagem, fantomas e testes in vitro foram realizados. Detectou-se um furo de 2.0 mm de raio provocado no tecido. Portanto, os experimentos mostraram que é possível detectar imperfeições no pericárdio utilizando a técnica de TIE. No entanto, a necessidade de aperfeiçoamento dos eletrodos, fonte de corrente, reservatório e algoritmo (malhas e priors) esta clara se o objetivo final for a seleção de pericárdios para válvulas cardíaca artificiais. / During the selection of bovine pericardium for use in artificial heart valves, one of the goals is to determine the direction of the collagen fibers and to identify more homogeneous regions. These characteristics influence the mechanical behavior and the durability of these valves. In this context, the electrical impedance tomography (EIT) could be employed as a tool to evaluate the pericardium, from the estimation of the mean fiber direction and the identification of homogeneous regions. The objective of this work is to investigate the possibility of using EIT technique for analysis and selection of pericardium, improving the selection criteria of this tissue. With this purpose in mind, it was developed a test bench, to accommodate the pericardium and to collect data, and it was implemented a Gauss-Newton based algorithm to estimate the resistivity distribution map of this tissue. For regularizing this ill-posed problem, it was developed and applied a priormodels sample-based. And for quality evaluation of the test bench and of the image algorithm, phantom experiments and in vitro tests were performed. It was detected a hole of 2.0 mm radius at the tissue. Therefore, the experiments showed that it is possible to detect defects on pericardium using EIT technique. However, the need of improvements on electrodes, current source, test bench and algorithm (meshes and priors) is clear if the final aim is the selection of pericardium for artificial heart valves.