Mass-spring model for simulation of heart valve tissue mechanical behavior.

Heart valves are functionally complex, making surgical repair difficult. Simulation-based surgical planning could facilitate repair, but current finite element (FE) studies are prohibitively slow for rapid, clinically oriented simulations. Mass-spring (M-S) models are fast but can be inaccurate. We quantify speed and accuracy differences between an anisotropic, nonlinear M-S and an efficient FE membrane model for simulating both biaxial and pressure loading of aortic valve (AV) leaflets. The FE model incurs approximately 10 times the computational cost of the M-S model. For simulated biaxial loading, mean error in normal strains is <1% for both FE and M-S models for equibiaxial loading but increases for non-equibiaxial states for the M-S model (7%). The M-S model was less able to simulate shear behavior, with mean strain error of approximately 80%. For pressurized AV leaflets, the M-S model predicts similar leaflet dimensions to the FE model (within 2.6%), and the coaptation zone is similar between models. The M-S model simulates in-plane behavior of AV leaflets considerably faster than the FE model and with only minor differences in the deformed mesh. While the M-S model does not allow explicit control of shear response, shear does not strongly influence shape of the simulated AV under pressure.