Planet modelling technology used to find heart defects

Geologists investigating the early formation of planets have applied their modelling techniques to medicine and showed how their methods can be used to detect heart defects.

The findings have already helped surgeons find a potentially life-threatening blood clot.

Professor Nick Petford, geologist and pro vice-chancellor of Bournemouth University and Professor Tracy Rushmer from Macquarie University, Sydney had been modelling planet formation to find out how liquid travels to their centre. “For a long time people thought the flow of liquid iron along the edge of grains and through narrow channels and cracks was not possible. NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) funding allowed me to develop a technique for importing object images of rock slices into a software package and then run a fluid-flow computer simulation to look at how liquid metal inside a meteorite moves around under pressure, “ said Professor Petford.

The team then used the same methodology to look at blood flow in a diseased human heart. “If you have an image and you know fluid flows in it, you can solve the fluid flow equations for that specific geometrey,” said Professor Petford. The raw data used was an actual MRI scan from a patient but the location of the stagnant flow was not obvious from the image. When the used the modelling to analyse the scan they predicted the clot’s location correctly.

By Leila Sattary