Animation and Modeling of Cardiac Performance for Patient Monitoring

The goal of Cardiac Rehabilitation is to reduce the risk of another cardiac event and to control the current heart condition of a patient and stop it from deteriorating. Most current Cardiac Rehabilitation procedures include counseling, to help the patient understand their disease more clearly and manage the disease process. As well as helping the patient to understand (and hopefully modify) risk factors e.g. high cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, lack of physical activity and high blood pressure. Development of exercise programs and lending emotional support are also standard of most Cardiac Rehabilitation Procedures. Many patients treated for heart problems do not follow correct rehabilitation procedures because they have a poor understanding of their disease and how it is affected by their behaviour and lifestyle. The aim of this project is to introduce a further tool for use in Cardiac Rehabilitation programs. By providing an animated model of a heart which reflects the cardiac disease of the patient it is hoped that patients will gain a better understanding of their disease and its consequences and allow them to gain more insight into why correct rehabilitation procedures are imperative. In addition the animated heart model will enable the patient to visually monitor the rehabilitation process which might lead to several psychological benefits (increased motivation to follow the rehabilitation procedures, a more positive attitude towards life after a heart attack, etc.). The impetus of the project is to design a model of the human heart that visualizes changes in cardiac performance and rehabilitation, rather than to design a physiologically and anatomically correct model.