Modeling · August 2026
Modeling Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy as a Dynamical System
Master's thesis work using coupled ODEs to model remodeling and disease progression in HCM.
Premise
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a feedback problem. Wall stress drives remodeling, remodeling changes wall geometry, and the new geometry changes wall stress. That is a dynamical system, and it should be possible to say something useful about its fixed points and stability rather than only describing endpoints.
Approach
- Continuous ODE compartment model coupling wall stress, hypertrophic signaling, and geometric remodeling
- Parameter ranges drawn from published cardiac mechanics literature
- Stability and bifurcation analysis around the physiologic operating point, looking for whether progression is a slow drift or a threshold crossing
- Multiscale framing: cell-level signaling to tissue stiffness to organ geometry
Where it stands
Model formulation and baseline analysis are done. Current work is sensitivity analysis and deciding whether pharmacologic intervention belongs in the model as an explicit PK/PD compartment or as a parameter shift.
Why it is interesting
Most HCM modeling I found is either molecular or clinical-statistical. The organ-scale feedback loop in between is where the interesting nonlinearity is, and it is comparatively thin ground.