Closing the loop (Video) 
(Seminars)
6 December 2011
4 - 5pm
Venue: Ground Floor Seminar Room (G010), UniServices House, 70 Symonds Street, Auckland
A Bioengineering Associate Professorial seminar by Denis Loiselle, Department of Physiology and Auckland Bioengineering Institute
With each beat in vivo, the left ventricle spontaneously undergoes an increase of pressure and, upon opening of the aortic valve, a decrease of volume, as it ejects blood into the aorta. It thus describes a pressure-volume ‘work-loop’. Identical behaviour obtains in a ‘working-heart’ in vitro. Under appropriate software control, comparable behaviour can be elicited in an isolated, ‘one-dimensional’, ventricular trabecula. So why is it so difficult to model a pressure-volume work-loop mathematically? In this presentation, I shall present a non-mathematical, quasi-historical, account of the difficulties that we have encountered.
Watch the high-resolution version of this video.
