A hybrid of light-field and light-sheet imaging to study myocardial function and intracardiac blood flow during zebrafish development

Biomechanical forces intimately contribute to cardiac morphogenesis. However, volumetric imaging to investigate the cardiac mechanics with high temporal and spatial resolution remains an imaging challenge. We hereby integrated light-field microscopy (LFM) with light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM), coupled with a retrospective gating method, to simultaneously access myocardial contraction and intracardiac blood flow at 200 volumes per second. While LSFM allows for the reconstruction of the myocardial function, LFM enables instantaneous acquisition of the intracardiac blood cells traversing across the valves. We further adopted deformable image registration to quantify the ventricular wall displacement and particle tracking velocimetry to monitor intracardiac blood flow. The integration of LFM and LSFM enabled the time-dependent tracking of the individual blood cells and the differential rates of segmental wall displacement during a cardiac cycle. Taken together, we demonstrated a hybrid system, coupled with our image analysis pipeline, to simultaneously capture the myocardial wall motion with intracardiac blood flow during cardiac development.

Hydromechanical Investigations on the Self-propping Potential of Fractures in Tight Sandstones

The hydromechanical properties of single self-propping fractures under stress are of fundamental interest for fractured-rock hydrology and a large number of geotechnical applications. This experimental study investigates fracture closure and hydraulic aperture changes of displaced tensile fractures, aligned tensile fractures, and saw-cut fractures for two types of sandstone (i.e., Flechtinger and Fontainebleau) with contrasting mechanical properties, cycling confining pressure between 5 and 30 MPa. Emphasis is placed on how surface roughness, fracture wall offset, and the mechanical properties of the contact asperities affect the self-propping potential of these fractures under normal stress. A relative fracture wall displacement can significantly increase fracture aperture and hydraulic conductivity, but the degree of increase strongly depends on the fracture surface roughness. For smooth fractures, surface roughness remains scale-independent as long as the fracture area is larger than a roll-off wavelength and thus any further displacement does not affect fracture aperture. For rough tensile fractures, these are self-affine over a larger scale so that an incremental fracture wall offset likely leads to an increase in fracture aperture. X-ray microtomography of the fractures indicates that the contact area ratio of the tensile fractures after the confining pressure cycle inversely correlates with the fracture wall offset yielding values in the range of about 3–25%, depending, first, on the respective surface roughness and, second, on the strength of the asperities in contact. Moreover, the contact asperities mainly occur isolated and tend to be preferentially oriented in the direction perpendicular to the fracture wall displacement which, in turn, may induce flow anisotropy. This, overall, implies that relatively harder sedimentary rocks have a higher self-propping potential for sustainable fluid flow through fractures in comparison to relatively soft rocks when specific conditions regarding surface roughness and fracture wall offset are met.

The Longitudinal Deformation Profile of a Rock Tunnel: An Elastic Analysis

The longitudinal deformation profile (LDP) is the profile of wall displacement versus the distance from the tunnel face. To develop LDP equations, numerical methods and in situ experiments have been used to obtain the deformation of a tunnel in three-dimensional space. However, extant approaches are inadequate in terms of explaining the mechanical relation between the wall displacement and the conditions of a tunnel (e.g., properties of rock). In this paper, an analytical approach is proposed to develop a new LDP equation. First, on the basis of the axisymmetric elastic model of a tunnel, a closed-form solution of wall displacement is derived. Then, a new LDP equation is presented according to the solution developed above; the coefficient β, defined as the ratio of the effective range of the “face effect” to the radius of the tunnel, is proposed for the first time. Finally, a case study is proposed to validate the practicability of this equation.

Analisis Interaksi Aliran Darah dan Pembuluh Serta Pengaruh Kebebasan Mesh Pada Simulasi Hemodinamik Berbasis Metode Elemen Hingga

Cardiovascular diseases are the world’s leading cause of death with significant death rates caused by abnormalities in vessels such as aneurysms and stenosis. These conditions can potentially cause blockage and thinning of vessels which may lead to heart attack, stroke, and bleedings. Recently, computational simulation methods are frequently used in blood flow analysis. These methods are frequently used in vascular fluid dynamics analysis which relate to the origin of a disease, efficacy prediction in installation of therapeutic instruments and complements the in vitro studies. This article presents an example of a simple vascular simulation to study the effect of blood flow with respect to vascular wall displacement. Furthermore, this research shows the importance of formal CFD pre-processing such as mesh independence testing which influences the simlation accuracy as well as vascular flow prediction and its effects on vascular wall displacement. In this research, it is concluded that the number of mesh elements affects the accuracy of vascular wall shear stress (WSS) calculations with average WSS difference of 0.8 Pa with no significant difference in wall displacement values. An average WSS of 1.95 Pa and a wall displacement of 5.7 µm are obtained from the blood flow simulation in this study.

Experimental Study on Seismic Performance of Fabricated Steel Foamed Concrete T-Shaped Wallboard

At the present stage, some research results have been made on connection of joints of fabricated reinforced concrete wallboards in China, but there is little research on the connection methods of steel-concrete composite structure, or methods like welding are directly adopted. On the basis of previous studies, a new type of joint connection method for steel-concrete composite structure was proposed. Self-tapping nails are used to connect the steel frames in the wallboard, and this joint connection method is used to splice the web and the flange plate. Concrete postcast strip was set up to produce the fabricated T-shaped wallboard specimens, and the failure form, bearing capacity characteristics, strain condition, wall displacement, and seismic performance were studied and analyzed, which provided data support for theoretical research. ABAQUS finite element software was used to establish an overall structure model, and the theoretical data and experimental data were obtained through simulation for comparative analysis in which the failure form, bearing capacity characteristics, strain condition, wall displacement, and seismic performance were compared to verify the reliability of the experiment.

A pilot study of bladder voiding with real-time MRI and computational fluid dynamics

Lower urinary track symptoms (LUTS) affect many older adults. Multi-channel urodynamic studies provide information about bladder pressure and urinary flow but offer little insight into changes in bladder anatomy and detrusor muscle function. Here we present a novel method for real time MRI during bladder voiding. This was performed in a small cohort of healthy men and men with benign prostatic hyperplasia and lower urinary tract symptoms (BPH/LUTS) to demonstrate proof of principle; The MRI urodynamic protocol was successfully implemented, and bladder wall displacement and urine flow dynamics were calculated. Displacement analysis on healthy controls showed the greatest bladder wall displacement in the dome of the bladder while men with BPH/LUTS exhibited decreased and asymmetric bladder wall motion. Computational fluid dynamics of voiding showed men with BPH/LUTS had larger recirculation regions in the bladder. This study demonstrates the feasibility of performing MRI voiding studies and their potential to provide new insight into lower urinary tract function in health and disease.