The main goal of her work is to help cardiologists gain deeper insight into the behavior of vascular prostheses, called stents, used in the treatment of aortic abdominal aneurysm (AAA) and in coronary angioplasty.
The project is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration Canic initiated between experts in cardiology, mathematics, biology, engineering and scientific computing to work on several problems related to the medical treatment of AAA and the treatment of coronary artery disease (CAD).
"Mathematical equations can be used to describe various physical, biological and physiological phenomena," Canic said. "Interaction between mathematics, engineering, biology and medicine has existed for a long time, but it has been only recently that state-of-the-art computer technology and scientific computing enabled true collaboration and full benefits to all the involved disciplines, as well as now bringing it to the human application stage. This is the first time in history that many complicated functions of the human body can not only be approximated with complicated mathematical equations, but also that solutions to those equations that cannot be found by hand can be calculated and visualized using super powerful computers."
One of the main focuses of the AAAS conference's "Symposium on Optimal Stent Design for Cardiovascular Interventions," led by Canic, will be to address the complicated set of problems in the mathematical and computer simulation of various cardiovascular diseases. In addition to Canic, who is the founder of this group, the other scientists involved in this interdisciplinary endeavor i
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Contact: Lisa Merkl
lkmerkl@uh.edu
713-743-8192
University of Houston
16-Feb-2004