The CCS Mission
The overarching goal of the ICES Center for Cardiovascular Simulation (CCS) is to provide cardiovascular scientists and clinicians with advanced simulations for the understanding, prevention, and development of treatments for cardiovascular disease. Such advanced simulations have the potential to further our understanding of cardiovascular disease and directly guide the concept, development, and clinical evaluation of new therapies. This will lead to:
- Lowering of morbidity and mortality.
- Reduced re-operative rates.
- Lessened post-operative recovery time.
The CCS is an integrated group directed towards developing predictive patient-specific simulation models and analyses of the onset and progression of cardiovascular diseases. Our goal is to improve our understanding of the underlying etiology and explore long-term treatment modalities such as surgical intervention and pharmaceutical treatments. Moreover, these enabling simulations will allow clinicians and medical scientists to evaluate proposed interventions for efficacy and predict and assess side effects, such as hypertrophy, tissue degeneration and dissection, and altered hemodynamics.
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Fundamental to our approach will be the development and implementation of novel simulation technologies that exploit advances in computational methods that seek to reduce the current trial-and-error approaches toward therapy development. State-of-the-art medical imaging, along with mathematical models of cellular and tissue function and related pathologies, will be integrated to develop patient specific models. The resulting simulation tools can provide detailed dynamic information on disease progress and allow for “what-if” scenarios to physicians and biomedical engineers to devise new interventions. The development and use of these tools in the context of patient-specific models will ultimately also allow clinicians to craft cardiovascular therapies that are optimized for the cardiovascular systems of each individual, with a resulting increase in success and decrease in risk of adverse side effects. The long-term goal for the CCS is to establish ICES, the Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering departments in the Cockrell School of Engineering, and The University of Texas at Austin as a leading center for the development of simulation-based cardiovascular medicine. This will help to drive the shift from the traditional empirically developed methods to one in which prediction is the dominant paradigm, providing great benefit to the health and economic well-being of the nation. |
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Open Positions
Associated Departments
Biomedical Engineering Department, The University of Texas at Austin
Mechanical Engineering Department, The University of Texas at Austin
Collaborating Medical Institutions and Laboratories
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Gorman Cardiovascular Research Group
