Computational tools could change the way sleep apnea is treated

Imagine that before performing surgery, doctors could consult software that would determine the actual effectiveness of the procedure before even lifting a scalpel. With the use of a computational model of the human airway being developed by Jeff Eldredge, a professor at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at UCLA, people who suffer from sleep apnea may one day benefit from such a scenario. Previously, Eldredge, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, had been working on creating models that simulated the interactions between blood and vessel walls with Shao-Ching Huang, an expert in high performance computing from the UCLA Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE), which funded development of the computational tools for the project. Last December at a conference in fluid dynamics, Eldredge and his UCLA colleagues presented the first detailed simulation of a human leg being injured by flying shrapnel, gushing blood and all. For that project, Eldredge worked in collaboration with a team from the Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology at the David Geffen School of Medicine. The goal is to train combat medics on a virtual patient that reacts in realistic ways. Researchers took CT scans of a patient’s leg to create the simulated one. Eldredge’s current work focuses on the problem of sleep apnea — the repetitive or partial obstruction of the airway during sleep that can lead to problems including high blood...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news