People are as different on the inside as they are on the outside, making it difficult to predict how an individual will respond to a surgical intervention without resorting to statistics and educated guesses. Charles Taylor, PhD, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of surgery at Stanford University, is using his engineering expertise to try to take the guesswork out of predicting surgical outcomes.
For the last decade, Taylor has been taking the detailed information of diagnostic imaging tools like MRI and CT scans and using it to form the basis of computer modeling programs that can help foresee the results of medical interventions.
On Feb. 21 at the annual meeting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., Taylor presented his latest accomplishment: factoring in the flexibility of veins and arteries to his model of the cardiovascular system. The realistic response of blood vessels adds more predictive ability to earlier versions of his simulation, which assumed rigid vessel walls for simplicity.
"The physics of blood flow is so complicated that it is impossible to guess what will happen during a surgery," Taylor said.
Medical professionals now have access to powerful tools for acquiring and visualizing data, Taylor noted. "It is incredible what we can see, but what we need to be able to do to make a good decision is to project into the future," he said.