Special sessions

Chairs:
Claire Conway, University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Ireland
Stéphane Avril, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne, France

This session will present the latest advances in the digital simulation in the cardiovascular domain including device interaction.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

1) Structural analysis, deployment, and positioning of implants in portions of the cardiovascular system
2) Hemodynamic analysis, design, and development of cardiovascular devices
3) Fluid-structure interaction analysis of cardiovascular devices
4) Design and optimization of vascular and valvular prostheses
5) Paediatric, congenital or adult heart disease treatment simulation
6) Modelling of patient-specific treatments and transcatheter delivery systems
7) Validation approaches for numerical models of cardiovascular implants
8) Image-based analysis of medical devices

Chairs:
Pierre-Yves Rohan, ENSAM, IBHGC, France
Giuseppe Sciumè, University of Bordeaux, France

Mechanistic modeling of biological soft tissues requires an accurate representation of their complex architecture, characterized by hierarchical structures comprising various interacting constituents, including cells, extracellular matrix, interstitial fluid, and blood. The development of such models necessitates careful consideration of the phenomena of interest and the availability of experimental data, which in turn dictate the level of complexity and the scales incorporated into the computational framework.

In this context, multiphase models based on porous media mechanics and mixture theory have emerged as robust methodologies. These approaches enable the study of hierarchical tissue organization and its behavior under physiological and pathological conditions, encompassing diverse applications such as tissue ulceration mechanics, physical oncology, drug delivery, biomedical engineering, and the mechanics of intervertebral discs and menisci.

This session will explore the challenges and limitations inherent to multiphase modeling approaches in biomechanics, particularly in addressing the coupling between experimental data, computational simulations, and clinical applications. By fostering dialogue among experimentalists, modelers, and clinicians, the session seeks to advance the interdisciplinary collaborations necessary for translating mechanistic models into actionable clinical insights.

Chairs:
Yohan Payan, Université Grenoble Alpes, TIMC, France
Pierre-Yves Rohan, ENSAM, IBHGC, France

Human soft tissues are complex materials that can exhibit nonlinear, time dependent, inhomogeneous, and anisotropic behaviors. Biological tissues also grow, remodel, and adapt to external mechanical stimuli. The development and implementation of hybrid experimental – computational methods to characterize mechanical properties is a critical challenge for the whole community. The choice of appropriate constitutive laws, the personalization of the constitutive parameters and the boundary conditions to which the tissues are subjected to are important for investigating the underlying mechanisms that either drive normal physiology or contribute to the onset and development of diseases in soft tissues. The development of techniques that can be employed in clinical routine and which allow to discriminate between different subgroups is also paramount for clinical translation. This session aims to facilitate discussions around these challenges based most recent works dealing with constitutive modelling, personalization and their clinical applications.

Chairs:
Alberto Zingaro (ELEM Biotech)
Michele Bucelli (Politecnico di Milano)
Eva Casoni (ELEM Biotech)
Roberto Piersanti (Politecnico di Milano)
Luca Dede’ (Politecnico di Milano)
Mariano Vazquez (ELEM Biotech and Barcelona Supercomputing Center)

This session delves into multiphysics and multiscale computational modelling of the heart, encompassing electrophysiology, mechanics, hemodynamics, valve dynamics, and perfusion. It highlights the development of virtual human twins, leveraging high-performance computing, reduced-order models, and surrogate models. A critical focus is placed on verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification to ensure model reliability and predictive accuracy. The session also explores virtual populations for precision medicine, patient stratification, and data assimilation techniques, emphasizing their role in translating cardiac simulations into actionable clinical insights.

Chairs:
Simona Celi (Fondazione Toscana G. Monasterio)
Lorenza Petrini (Politecnico di Milano)
Oscar Camara Rey (UPF)

In recent decades, the literature has provided numerous examples of in-silico studies investigating various aspects of biomedical devices. The credibility of a computational model for a medical device and treatment is closely tied to its verification and validation. Specifically, for cardiovascular devices, the validation phase is particularly challenging. It requires procedures that address the inherent complexities of conducting experimental campaigns on intricate systems to generate in-vitro and/or in-vivo data for comparison with computational outputs. Moreover, while the use of both data sources is crucial for establishing clinical relevance, it also introduces variability due to biological and environmental factors. This underscores the importance of robust methods for managing uncertainty. This session aims to showcase examples of validation approaches for cardiovascular in-silico models focused on electrophysiology, mechanics, and fluid dynamics applications and to explore techniques for quantifying uncertainty in the collection of in-vitro and in-vivo data.

Chairs:
Philippe Zysset, University of Bern
Dieter Pahr, TU Wien

This session explores the computational methods used to simulate the complex mechanical behaviour of bone from mineralized collagen fibers to the whole-bone scale including elastic, poro-elastic, viscous, yield and post-yield aspects under experimental, physiological, adaptive or injurious loading conditions. It aims to demonstrate how these models enhance our understanding of bone and help support clinical decision-making in treating bone-related conditions.

Chairs:
Maria Isabella Maremonti, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Valeria Panzetta, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

Cell mechanosensing is the ability of cells to sense and respond to mechanical stimuli. When mechanosensation occurs, it generates cascades of biochemical signals that translate into molecular expression changes and structural modifications. Cells are endowed with different components that enable them to react to a broad range of stimuli, including compression or shear forces, pressure, and vibrations. Microfluidics emerges as a powerful tool for studying these processes, enabling precise control of stresses on cells in space and time. Crucially, microfluidics enables high-throughput experimentation by allowing the simultaneous application of diverse mechanical cues, facilitating rapid and systematic investigations of mechanosensitive behaviours.

Chairs:
Juan C. Del Alamo, University of Washigton
Manuel Garcia-Villalba, TU Wien

The atria, the heart’s upper chambers, exhibit complex flow patterns, including non-Newtonian effects and coagulation that naturally predispose to thrombosis. In atrial fibrillation (AFib), a common arrhythmia, abnormal electromechanics and biomechanics disturb flow, further promoting atrial thrombosis and raising the risk of embolic events. While anticoagulants lower this risk, they also increase bleeding, leading to treatment challenges. Computer models are gaining traction as potential tools to study thrombosis mechanisms and improve the clinical management of AFib patients. This session will showcase diverse cutting-edge research on cardiac computer models, highlighting multiscale and multiphysics phenomena in the left atrium. We aim to foster collaborations between engineers, scientists, and clinicians.

Chairs:
Sébastien Laporte, ENSAM
Sam Evans, Cardiff University

This session will explore advanced modelling and simulation approaches to understand injuries affecting the muscle/tendon complex, covering both traumatic injuries and those resulting from prolonged mechanical stress, such as pressure ulcers. Topics will include biomechanical modelling, computational simulation of injury mechanisms.
By addressing both acute and chronic injury scenarios, the session aims to bring together researchers and clinicians to discuss innovative methods and applications for improving diagnosis, treatment, and patient outcomes.
This multidisciplinary focus will foster collaboration across fields such as biomechanics and clinical research.

Chairs:
Jose Manuel García Aznar, University of Zaragoza
Jose J. Muñoz, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Cells can exhibit multiple ways of interacting mechanically and chemically with their environment (e.g. external media, the extracellular matrix, or other neighbouring cells). This flexibility poses challenges on the understanding but also on the accurate modelling of their response.

This Special Session welcomes methods to model intracellular structures such as the cytoskeleton or proteins (actin, myosin, ions), and intercellular mechanical and chemical flows for simulating single and multicellular systems. Authors are therefore invited to submit works dealing with vertex, particle and continuum methods for direct and inverse analysis of cellular behaviour.

Chairs:
Luigi La Barbera, Politecnico di Milano
Dominika Ignasiak, ETH Zürich

Musculoskeletal spine models are increasingly used to better understand spine biomechanics in physiological and pathological conditions. A variety of approaches are today available spanning from multibody models to fully deformable finite element models, including both hybrid or coupled approaches. However, their translation to clinical and surgical practice remains limited.
The Special Session brings together experts of the field to discuss the latest advancements on musculoskeletal spine modelling and their translation to clinically relevant conditions. A special focus is dedicated on verification, validation and uncertainty quantification of current approaches from basic research to clinical application to ensure models’ credibility.

Chairs:
Mara Terzini, Politecnico di Torino
Alessandra Aldieri, Politecnico di Torino
Simone Borrelli, Politecnico di Torino
Giovanni Putame, Politecnico di Torino

Due to the growing adoption of cutting-edge medical technologies, computational models are increasingly being adopted to understand the interplay between medical devices and the human in vivo environment. This special session brings together experts to discuss recent advances in computational modelling to investigate these interactions, study their effects on the in vivo environment, and predict biological responses at different space and temporal scales. Topics may include, but would not be limited to, tissue remodelling and wound healing, medical devices integration or failure, tissues damage, biocompatibility assessment, wear, and degradation.

Chairs:
Noelia Grande Gutiérrez, Carnegie Mellon University
Vijay Vedula, Columbia University

This session will explore the latest advances in physics-based and data-driven approaches to model thrombosis, with a particular focus on the development and application of computational methods, challenges in clinical translation, and verification and validation with experimental and clinical data. Topics include:
• modeling the mechanics of clot formation, growth, and embolization
• advances in multiscale, multiphysics models of blood-clot interactions, including computational fluid dynamics, fluidstructure interaction, multiphase dynamics
• development and application of image-based thrombosis models in the arterial and venous circulation, such as coronary artery disease, aortic dissection, stroke due to atrial fibrillation, cardiomyopathies, venous thromboembolism, device-induced thrombosis
• development of therapeutic strategies and design of engineered devices to mitigate thrombosis.

Chairs:
Mahua Bhattacharya, Atal Bihari Vajpayee-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management
Roshni Chakraborty, Atal Bihari Vajpayee-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management

Medical data in any form of macro, micro and molecular level is an essential component to determine the diagnostic procedure and treatment planning. The different sensor-based data is required to determine the nature of diseases and its prognosis. With the advancement of medical technology, the automation in decision making is emerging as a measure of improved diagnostic procedures through analysis of data using artificial intelligence and machine learning based methodologies. The challenges in medical diagnostic procedures are related to early prediction of prognosis of any disease, analysis of symptoms,
design of sensor for detection and collection of biological data and finally correlation of the medical information into technical domain . In present proposal all these aspects are aiming to be further addressed and discussed by the eminent speakers.

Chairs:
Gabriel Bernardino, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Marta Nuñez García, Universidade de Santiago, Spain
Machine learning allows to take advantage of large datasets and analyse high-dimensional data—such as images—to identify disease biomarkers and achieve more precise patient stratification and phenogrouping than traditional qualitative methods. Despite its potential to capture complex non-linear associations and interactions, applying machine learning in medicine remains challenging due to the need for interpretability, limited and suboptimal data, the presence of biases and spurious associations, and the physiological variability of each individual. In this session, we welcome methodological and applied contributions of machine learning for risk stratification, diagnosis, and prognosis to obtain a better understanding of pathophysiology

Chairs:
Miquel Aguirre Font & Eduardo Soudah
Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain

In this session, we will explore how computational modeling and image processing are transforming the way we study aorta pathologies. A primary focus will be on aortic dissection, aortic coarctation, abdominal aneurysms, among other aortic pathologies. We will discuss how computational models can analyze hemodynamics factors, such as, wall stress, oscillatory shear index and flow disturbances to predict the progression, evolution and risk of aorta failure. Another key aspect of this session will be the interaction between the aorta and medical devices, analysing potential complications and comorbidities. Using advanced numerical techniques, we will examine how virtual testing enhances medical device design, minimizes risks like thrombosis and wrong deployment, and optimizes performance in vivo. Special emphasis will be placed on the role of biomechanics and fluid-structure interaction (FSI) in improving clinical outcomes.

Chairs:
Sarah K. Shaffer & Daniel P. Nicolella,
Southwest Research Institute, United States
Probabilistic methods are increasingly being used in the field of computational biomechanics to account for uncertainty and variability inherent to biological systems. Probabilistic methods allow researchers to evaluate the impact of variation and uncertainty in geometry (anatomy), material properties, boundary conditions and other model inputs on outcomes of interest – such as tissue stress. These methods can be used to help predict outcomes of interest (such as injury risk) on a population-level and improve the robustness of model validations.

Chairs:
Pablo Alvarez, National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, MIMESIS Team, France
Maria J. Ledesma-Carbayo, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
Human breasts are very soft tissues that deform considerably under load. Accurately estimating this deformation has great potential in clinical practice, with applications such as diagnosis, surgical planing, mammography, and various computer-guided interventions. Although research on the subject is not scarce, reaching the level of precision, efficiency and robustness required for clinical use remains a significant challenge. This special session explores the recent advances in computational modeling of breast deformation, with a special focus on interventional computer-guided techniques.