LungSiM

LungSiM is an in-house Python library that is made available through Fortran90 and C bindings. The modules are written in Fortran and then made available to be imported through Python, and certain functions are made callable. LungSim is being developed at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI) over several years, and it offers numerous models from lung ventilation with chest mechanics to a perfusion model that are capable of replicating normal and certain pathological conditions. LungSim takes advantage of using patient-based models by using a volume-filling branching algorithm that matches species morphology (mostly studied for humans at the moment).

LungSim has been offering a platform to address Pulmonary Hypertension under the 12 LABOURS project over the past few years.

Large and small vessel disease (Occlusions and vascular remodelling, respectively) associated with pulmonary hypertension are implemented in the perfusion module in LungSim. Partial and full occlusions and different scenarios of remodelling as a result of surgery are built into the library. LungSim was used under Exemplar Project 1 for cardio-pulmonary research under the 12Labours project to estimate the haemodynamic response of Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) patients to surgical treatment, known as pulmonary endarterectomy (PEA). Through computational modelling, an estimation of microvascular disease burden was made possible, which is a key driver in response to PEA. A cohort of CTEPH patients was evaluated as a pilot study to show the model’s efficacy and limitations. The primary results have been very promising, and the plan is to evaluate the model on a larger number of patients.

How to build LungSim is available through this link: LungSiM documentation