Biomechanics and modeling of tissue-engineered heart valves

Heart valve tissue engineering (HVTE) is a promising technique to overcome the limitations of currently available heart valve prostheses. However, before clinical use, still several challenges need to be overcome. The functionality of the developed replacements is determined by their biomechanical properties and, ultimately, by their collagen architecture. Unfortunately, current techniques are often not able to induce a physiological tissue remodeling, which compromises the long-term functionality. Therefore, a deeper understanding of the process of tissue remodeling is required to optimize the phenomena involved via improving the current HVTE approaches. Computational simulations can help in this process, being a valuable and versatile tool to predict and understand experimental results. This chapter first describes the similarities and differences in functionality and biomechanical properties between native and tissue-engineered heart valves. Secondly, the current status of computational models for collagen remodeling is addressed and, finally, future directions and implications for HVTE are suggested.