9302545 Peskin This award will support computational studies of the heart, the development of the immersed boundary method, and the production of software involving the immersed boundary method for the biological community. The first component of the project will be the creation of a computer model of the heart that is efficient enough and realistic enough to be a practical scientific tool for the computational investigation of cardiac function. One goal of the project is to produce simulations of imaging modalities (e.g. color-Doppler flow, MRI) that are used in biological experimentation so that the output from the computer experiment can be directly compared to experimental data. This type of output make possible a direct comparison between simulated and actual data. To the extent that the two agree, this lends support to the validity of the model. Another benefit from such comparison is this: if the model is valid , then the simulated data can be used to enhance the visualization technique. The software component of this project will be develop in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. The project is being supported by the Computational Mathematics, the Physiology, and the Computational Biology programs. ***
