Aug. 4, 2002
Ventricular assist devices have been used as bridge-to-recovery devices for heart failure patients. These devices usually rely on animal testing to understand the interaction between the cardiovascular system and the devices. A project that is being worked on at Lafayette could result in a test platform that would minimize the use of animals for heart assist device testing.
Chris Royle of Stockton, a senior electrical and computer engineering major and math minor at Lafayette is working on that project by building a mock circulatory with baroreceptor control mechanism.
Royle, a preseason All-American center on the Leopards' football team, is a participant in Lafayette's distinctive EXCEL Scholars Program, in which students assist faculty members with research while earning a stipend. He is working with Yih-Choung Yu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Yu began working on this project last semester with another student, Matthew Loh '04. Together they modeled the project through computer simulation. Yu says that the goal is to develop a mock circulatory system to simulate the baroreceptor mechanism, a neurological function of arterial pressure and heart rate regulation. The fluid circulation loop and other hardware that is being set up this summer is in preparation for building the system in the fall.
"Along with Dr. Yu, I am putting together a loop to simulate the heart, more specifically the left ventricle which pumps blood through the aorta, and the systemic side of the circulatory system, the arteries and veins that run from your heart to the rest of your body," says Royle. "Once we have the loop constructed, we will be able to recreate various situations, such as different heart beats. We can then use this loop to design a compensator which will control either the pressure or volume of fluid that we would like to move."
Royle says that the loop is a physical fluid system made out of tubing to model arteries and veins. It has a few other pieces such as a piston in a chamber and compliance chambers that act as regulators to keep the pressure relatively constant in the loop and a variable opening to act as resistance to the fluid's flow.
This project is allowing Royle to use what he has learned in class in an new area that he wouldn't be able to focus on in coursework, he says.
"A lot of similarities and parallels exist between a fluid system and an electrical system, so many of the concepts carry over," says Royle. "But I still had to read about and become comfortable with the correlation to the actual heart."
The Control Systems course that Royle took with Yu this past semester prompted his interest in working with Yu over the summer.
"Towards the end of the course, he described the project that he would be working on and proposed what my contribution would entail," says Royle. "This work is pretty close the what we learned in class, except that now I have the opportunity to start from scratch and see how all the parts come together."
Royle says that Lafayette is a very good environment for this project. "With the college's resources and Dr. Yu's prior experiences, the atmosphere is very conducive to this type of research," says Royle.
Royle is an Eagle Scout, earned a spot on the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll during the fall of 1999, is a three-year letterwinner in football, and is a two-time All-League honoree (2000 & 2001).
