Cardiovascular disease affects almost half of adults in the United States, setting a major challenge for public health. To improve the diagnosis and treatment of such a heart status, Rui Zhu, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the School of Industrial and Systems of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, received a National Scientific School Development Program Reveal the Mechanisms behind them Cardiac arrhythmias.
A healthy human heart beats at a normal rate, but cardiac arrhythmia disrupts this pattern due to dysfunctional electrical impulses in the muscle tissue of the heart. Zhu’s research focuses on modeling complex systems and plans to implement this know -how to tackle the challenge of patient heart modeling.
Polyphorosis simulations can give us a more realistic way to understand how arrhythmias work. But these simulations have been mostly manufactured for healthy hearts. This is due to the fact that, in fact, weak hearts may be very different in anatomy, pathology, etc. This makes it difficult for conventional simulations to capture these conditions accurately. “
Rui Zhu, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Industrial and Engineering Systems, University of Oklahoma
To face this challenge and provide a clearer understanding of electric, mechanical and wet dynamics in arrhythmic hearts, Zhu will build previous modeling work with cardiac electrical activity and incorporate deep learning techniques with these computing heart simulations Understand how multi-physicist agents can contribute to arrhythmic situations.
Zhu’s designs are unique because current practice focuses mainly on understanding the electrical activity of the heart. Therefore, the primary diagnostic tool for detecting arrhythmias is an electrocardiogram of 12 lead or ECG, which measures the electrical activity of the heart by recording the electrical signals of the heart projected on the surface of the body. Examination of Zhu’s electrical, mechanical and liquid potential and their interdependencies will give a broader picture of what is happening in arrhythmic hearts.
Zhu is excited about the educational elements of the project. “The purpose of educational activities is to promote a health care labor with a deep understanding of the physiology of arrhythmia and advanced methodologies developed in this project,” he said. With the support of partners in educational and health institutions, Zhu’s work will help to train the next generation of health care workforce to better understand a disease that affects millions of people in the United States.
Zhu’s research has been honored with various paper awards at the Institute of Industrial and Engineering Systems and the Institute of Business Research and Administrative Sciences. She received BS in industrial design and an MS in human factors in design from the Harbin Institute of Technology and received her doctorate in industrial engineering from the State University of Pennsylvania.
The NSF Career Awards support the early school career to serve as standards for research and education and to lead the advances to organizations. It is the organization’s most famous prize for the original career.