The cardiovascular apparatus is a complex dynamical system that
carries oxygen and nutrients to cells, removes carbon dioxide and
wastes and performs several other tasks essential for life. The
physically-based modelling of the cardiovascular system has a long
history, which begins with the simple lumped Windkessel model by
O. Frank in 1899. Since then, the development has been impressive
and a great variety of mathematical models have been proposed.
The purpose of this Thesis is to analyse and develop two different mathematical models of the cardiovascular system able to
(i) shed new light into cardiovascular ageing and atrial fibrillation
and to (ii) be used in clinical practice. To this aim, in-house codes
have been implemented to describe a lumped model of the complete
circulation and a multi-scale (1D/0D) model of the left ventricle
and the arterial system. We then validate each model. The former is validated against literature data, while the latter against
both literature data and numerous in-vivo non-invasive pressure
measurements on a population of six healthy young subjects.
Afterwards, the confirmed effectiveness of the models has been
exploited. The lumped model has been used to analyse the effect
of atrial fibrillation. The multi-scale one has been used to analyse the effect of ageing and to test the feasibility of clinical use
by means of central-pressure blind validation of a parameter setting unambiguously defined with only non-invasive measurements
on a population of 52 healthy young men. All the applications
have been successful, confirming the effectiveness of this approach.
Pathophysiology studies could include mathematical model in their
setting, and clinical use of multi-scale mathematical model is feasible