LIFE SCIENCES

Virtual Lung

Principal Investigator:
Wolfgang A. Wall

Affiliation:
Institute for Computational Mechanics, Technische Universität München (Germany)

Local Project ID:
pr32ne

HPC Platform used:
SuperMUC of LRZ

Date published:

Mechanical ventilation for patients suffering from lung diseases can lead to severe complications. Although it is known that the unnatural loading of diseased lungs during ventilation is responsible for an overstraining of the tissue, the specific processes cannot be captured even with the most modern imaging techniques. Therefore, computer simulations can substantially contribute to gaining new insights into these so called ventilation-induced lung injuries.

At the Institute for Computational Mechanics (TUM), scientists have developed a ‘virtual lung’, enabling the detailed investigation of important phenomena such as air flow from the windpipe to the smallest airways and the resulting local straining of the tissue. Information obtained from these very complex simulations at the GCS can help physicians predict the effect of different interventions and develop improved patient-specific treatments in the future.

Read the full article in inSiDE, Vol. 10 No. 1

Scientific Contact:

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang A. Wall
 Institute for Computational Mechanics of Technische Universität München
 Boltzmannstrasse 15, D-85747 Garching
 e-mail: wall [@] lnm.mw.tum.de

LRZ project ID:  pr32ne

July 2013

Tags: LRZ Life Sciences