Banco prova per la valutazione di dispositivi di assistenza ventricolare (VAD): progettazione e prove sperimentali

In the last decades cardiovascular diseases greatly increased worldwide, and bioengineering provided new technologies and cardiovascular prostheses to medical doctors and surgeons. Ventricular assist devices aroused notable interests. As a consequence it is important to faithfully reproduce the interaction between the prostheses and the cardiovascular system when in-vitro experiments are performed. For this reason, a new and improved kind of test benches become necessary. This thesis describes an artificial ventricle for use in mock circulatory systems. By means of a hybrid software-hardware interaction, it reproduces a modified elastance mechanism (called impedance mechanism) of a natural ventricle by mimicking its preload (mean systemic pressure) and afterload (aortic pressure) sensitivity. Due to its excellent robustness and flexibility, this impedance-based ventricle can be used for designing and testing cardiovascular prostheses. Fabio Piedimonte (piedimonte@disp.uniroma2.it)