UNSW Sydney researchers have developed a soft robotic model of the human heart that accurately reproduces the movement and mechanics of diseased cardiac tissue, creating a new platform for testing implants, surgical tools and other heart devices before they reach patients.
Published in Nature Communications and Advanced Science, the research introduces a beating model of the left side of the heart that includes artificial valves, papillary muscles and chordae tendineae – structures that are critical to healthy heart function and are frequently affected by disease.
The device is able to accurately reproduce the process in a real heart where cardiac valves leak and blood flows backwards, which increases the risk of heart failure and other life-threatening complications.
The research team says the new soft robot can eventually help provide a better understanding of heart conditions, reduce reliance on animal testing and provide doctors with patient-specific models to plan treatments before procedures are performed.
While the study demonstrates the technology’s potential, the researchers stress that the current model is still a proof of concept rather than a finished clinical tool.
Several challenges remain, including improving materials, refining the control systems and making the device even more compatible with medical imaging. Future versions will also need to better reproduce certain aspects of heart function and use patient-specific geometries rather than simplified structures.
Team leader, Scientia Associate Professor Thanh Nho Do, from UNSW’s School of Biomedical Engineering and UNSW Medical Robotics Lab, says the work is important because cardiovascular disease remains the world’s leading cause of death.
Most importantly, the platform must be validated against real patient data.
“The most important next step is deeper validation against clinical data,” Scientia A/Prof. Do says.
“The current studies demonstrate strong proof-of-concept performance.
“The model can reproduce key pressure, flow, motion, valve, and imaging features that align with human heart behaviour. However, before this platform can be used for clinical decision-making, we need to compare it systematically with patient data across a wide range of heart anatomies and disease severities.”
The team, which also includes Professor Christopher Hayward, a heart failure and transplant cardiologist at St Vicent’s Hospital Sydney, as well as Professor Jelena Rnjak-Kovacina and Scientia Associate Professor Hoang-Phuong Phan from UNSW, hope that with further development of this technology it can be adopted in clinical settings.
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