Diseases of the cardiovascular system are a major public health problem
around the world. Thus, evaluation of the function of the heart to
diagnose the presence of such diseases and to assess their severity and
response to therapy has obvious clinical importance. Cardiac imaging
methods can provide noninvasive ways to study the beating heart, and are
widely used for this purpose. However, current imaging approaches to the
evaluation of cardiac function have many limitations. The currently used
imaging approaches have technical limitations in their spatial and
temporal resolution and the time required for data acquisition, as well
as in the kinds of information they can provide. The analysis of the
resulting images also has limitations, due in part to these technical
imaging limitations, but also due in part to the intrinsic properties of
the structure and function of the heart. Modeling approaches offer the
possibility of improved quantitative image analysis and of further
interpretation of the resulting data. Modeling will probably also be
needed for a fuller understanding of the derived cardiac function data
in the context of the integrated systemic physiology of which the heart
is a part. Furthermore, modeling will be needed to relate the observed
function at the organ and local regional level to the underlying
cellular and molecular mechanisms of cardiac function in health and
disease. Thus, although there are currently significant limitations on
the imaging and analysis of cardiac function, modeling approaches offer
the possibility of improving our capabilities in clinically useful ways.
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