A bionic “heart” that simulates the beating motion of the real thing has been developed by scientists.
Engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say their so-called biorobotic hybrid device could be used for testing artificial valves and other cardiac devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators without the need for animal tests.
Dr Ellen Roche, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and one of the study authors, said: “Regulatory testing of cardiac devices requires many fatigue tests and animal tests. [The new device] could realistically represent what happens in a real heart, to reduce the amount of animal testing or iterate the design more quickly.”
The team also believe their findings, published in the journal Science Robotics, could one day be used to develop artificial hearts for humans.
Dr Chris Nguyen, of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Cardiovascular Research Centre and co-lead author on the study, said: “With further tissue engineering, we could potentially see the biorobotic hybrid heart be used as an artificial heart – a very needed potential solution given the global heart failure epidemic where millions of people are at the mercy of a competitive heart transplant list.”
The team developed a robotic myocardium – the muscular outer tissue of the heart – and wrapped it around a pig’s inner heart like “bubble wrap” using a tissue silicone adhesive they designed called TissueSil.
Read more about the tech tackling heart disease:
- Collagen used as a bio-ink to 3D print heart
- Artificial intelligence could create heart attack early warning system
- Heart attacks: the discoveries bringing an end to one of the UK's biggest killers
The artificial muscles of the robotic myocardium were able to mimic the pattern of the heart’s natural muscle fibres, acting together to squeeze and twist the inner heart, similar to the way a real heart beats and pumps blood.
Dr Roche added: “The device is a real biological heart whose tough muscle tissue has been replaced with a soft robotic matrix of artificial heart muscles, resembling bubble wrap.”
The team say they can control the heart rate, contractility and stroke volume of their bionic heart to simulate a diseased heart.The researchers believe this type of modelling can be used to help designers test cardiac devices such as prosthetic heart valves, pacemakers and defibrillators.
Dr Nyugen said: “Imagine that a patient before cardiac device implantation could have their heart scanned, and then clinicians could tune the device to perform optimally in the patient well before the surgery.”
Reader Q&A: Why is the heart slightly to the left in the chest?
Asked by: Adam King, Huddersfield
The heart is located fairly centrally beneath the breastbone, but it does protrude towards the left. This is because the heart’s bottom-left chamber (the ‘left ventricle’) is responsible for pumping oxygenated blood around the whole body, so it needs to be stronger and larger than the right ventricle, which only pumps blood to the lungs. It’s this left ventricle that you can feel beating in your chest.
One in 10,000 people actually have a mirror-image heart which points towards the right – a condition known as ‘dextrocardia’.
Read more: