My daughter was two years old when she got her first pacemaker. She needed it because of a congenital condition that had reversed the lower chambers of her heart. This caused electrical problems, making her heart less efficient at circulating blood and significantly shortening her expected lifespan.
There was little guidance for doctors managing his condition as it was so rare there was no way to predict how he would react to treatments. The heart is a complex organ with many moving parts, and each person’s heart is unique. There are countless ways unaware problems can arise, especially in children. This means there is often not enough information available to make data-driven decisions about unusual disorders.
As an engineer, I knew there had to be a solution. I had seen how advanced three-dimensional models, known as “virtual twins,” help plane and car manufacturers test new, complex machines in digital simulations. I thought that the heart is designed like a machine. It pumps blood in a regular pattern. It runs on electricity. Maybe I could help.
This awareness led me to start the Living Heart Project more than ten years ago. While it is possible to capture the specifics of a person’s heart with medical imaging tools such as CT and MRI scans, such imaging is still incomplete.
So we assembled a team of experts to get a better picture. Together, our coalition of engineers and doctors has developed a way to create simulations of the hearts of living people, first creating a generic “average” heart and, more recently, modeling the hearts of specific individuals, accurate down to the smallest and most singular details .
My daughter’s condition was one in a million, but her predicament was not. Heart disease is consistently the leading cause of death in the United States and represents greater medical costs than any other condition. By 2035, the American Heart Association predicts that 45 percent of Americans will have some form of heart disease.
Despite being so common, heart disease is difficult to diagnose because the symptoms are similar to those of other diseases, such as respiratory disorders. According to a study by Journal of Heart Failure.
See inside the heart
But with a virtual twin involved, the diagnostic picture changes. The twin can be viewed on a screen or in virtual reality as a three-dimensional model that can be zoomed in, rotated and examined by a team of experts. Doctors can “see” inside a patient’s heart, pumping under different conditions to spot problems. They can hear the heartbeat and observe the flow of blood and oxygen, all without affecting the patient.
Because virtual twins include the necessary characteristics of each patient’s heart, they allow doctors to design complex reconstructions and even test drugs and devices such as coronary stents safely on the twin. In short, they help determine the best course of treatment using simulations.
In one case, Dr. David Hoganson of Boston Children’s Hospital encountered a child with a puzzling condition: Oxygen in the blood flowed from the heart to only one of the lungs. Using a virtual heart twin, Hoganson and his team identified the problem, designed and tested a surgical procedure, and used it to save the child’s life. They have since performed hundreds of other surgeries using virtual twins.
Virtual twins are also valuable teaching tools, helping students learn about the heart and other organs. They allow patients and their families to see up close what is happening, promoting understanding and hope during an otherwise frightening experience. And thanks to artificial intelligence and cloud services, the information provided by one doctor can influence the work of other doctors around the world.
Today the possibilities continue to grow. We are starting to understand how to simulate other organs, such as the lungs and brain. One day we will be able to create virtual twins of our entire bodies, transforming the way we manage our health. We’re already working with the FDA to create virtual human subjects for early clinical trials, helping get treatments to people who need them faster than ever.
From testing the best location for medical devices to understanding how a new drug will interact with living tissue, a virtual twin allows researchers to conduct tests in days that previously required years of patient trials.
When I started this job, people wondered if I would trust my daughter’s life to this new technology. When she was first diagnosed with the disease, doctors had little confidence in their options for making her heart work. They thought her heart would only last 30 years. She’s 34 now and isn’t slowing down. She is a pediatric neuroscientist in a major program in the country, where she works to discover treatments for children with brain disorders. Her future is still uncertain, but with a personalized health plan and her virtual twin, she has the best chance ever.
Virtual twin technology has already improved the lives of countless patients. The world will change in the years to come.
Steve Levine, Ph.D., is senior director of virtual human modeling at Dassault Systèmes and founder and executive director of the Living Heart Project.
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