Perfusionist nurse trying to lear fluids mechanics

Hello everyone;

I am an Spanish nurse studying a postdegree of Extracorporeal Circulation on Cardiac Surgery and now we are studying phisiology and fluids mechanics and i discorver my university has license with matlab and i would like to learn about my field simulating on this software. Anyone has any tip how start, if vaible simulate an oxiygen membrane etc

Thank you everybody.

[John D'Errico]

I think you are asking for too much here, wanting to learn to simulate the behavior of an oxygen membrane, without knowing a thing about MATLAB at all. Before you learn to dive off the 30 foot platform into a pool, you want to learn to swim first, in the shallow end of the pool.

[Cristobal]

Yes yes i know its just want do a big scope of my aspirations, i am doing first of all basics course of Matlab :D anyway my question was focus on viability in a long long future :D. If you have any tip for start i woud be glad to hear it.

Now i am focus on r undertsanding flow conservation on a close system, for example one question is there is anyway to convert Pa on mmHG without Gain block ??

[Steven Lord]

Lots of companies and individuals use MATLAB and MathWorks products for medical applications. You can read stories about what our customers in this space have done here and here.

I kind of agree with John D'Errico here. Before you start going in-depth into applications, you should probably develop a good foundation of how to use MATLAB. I suggest you start with the free MATLAB Onramp tutorial to quickly learn the essentials of MATLAB. After that, well, I don't see any of our self-paced online courses that seem tailored towards medical applications, but depending on what you're interested in doing some of the general Data Import and Analysis or Modeling and Simulation courses may be useful.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

I have not seen any posts here on the details of cardiovascular dynamics. I am not certain if Simscape Fluids can help you with this, since I see no specific mention of blood in the Isothermal Liquid Library.

I would do a Web search. I did and discovered Blood flow dynamics and vascular fluid mechanics (this has since been retracted, however the references are still available although 20 of the 30 references were not varifiable), Blood Flow - Matlab | PDF | Hemodynamics | Fluid Dynamics, Blood flow dynamics and vascular fluid mechanics, and a book Biomedical Fluid Dynamics: Flow and Form (ISBN: 9780198812586).

I suggest that you search using 'blood (physical properties) (fluid dynamics} matlab' to see what you can find that may be relevant.

EDIT -- (25 Dec 2025 at 14:41)

I just now discovered: SimVascular: Cardiovascular Modeling and Simulation and Cardiovascular System in SimscapeTM with ECMO Machine

.

[Cristobal]

Wooow thank you very much. Simvascular i alredy work with him but has a problema and is the installation on windows, i must try again to install the physics models on WSL.

The ECMO project is amazing i should try figure why Cardiovascular system is represented by electrical components instead hydraulics XD

[Star Strider]

As always, my pleasure!

Electrical analogs of physiological systems are commonly used in biomedical engineering, except when it is necessary to model the actual puldstile characteristics of the vascular system. Even then it is possible to use electrical analogs. Electrical analogs have the advantage of simplicity and an extensive existing litarature, and since the fundamental concepts are the same -- voltage is pressure, flow is current -- the analogies are straightforward. The analogs only fail when it is necessary to consider such characteristics as turbulence, that -- at least to my knowledge -- do not occur in electrical circuits.

(If you are having problems with Windows, switch to Linux. Ubuntu seems to be the most popular, although several other distributions work well. I switched from Windows to Ubuntu a year ago. My only regret is not doing it earlier!)

[Cristobal]

Ummm i will look for articles of biomedical simulation with electrical components, never imagine that. Anyway know i am doing simulation on Matlab learning basics concepts before swithc to simuescape

And with the simvascular I switch to linux with WSL following instruction of the website but its a pain making all work in a few days i will try again :D

[Star Strider]

MATLAB works well for such simulations. I sm also beginning to learn Python.

Linux requires understanding of the command line syntax, however Ubuntu mostly uses graphical user interfaces currently, so that makes using it much easier. I only need to use the commands occasionally.

I am pursuing cardiovascular dynamics with the objective of modeling reflections in the arterial system, and related characteristics. This is a bit difficult because I have not been able to find an appropriate description of the mathematics of those dynamics. This is for a different project, as well as to satisfy my own curiosity. The electrical analogs for that are mostly with respect to transmission llines.

Answer 2

[William Rose]

@Cristobal,

I have used Matlab for cardiovascular simulations.

In the NIH-funded study "Impact of continuous-flow mechanical circulatory support on cerebrospinal fluid motility", (Artificial Organs, 2023) we simulated patients with varying degrees of heart failure, with and without a left ventricular assist device, with particular attention to cerebrospinal fluid pressure and flow.

In the NASA-funded study "Computational simulation to understand vision changes during prolonged weightlessness" (2013), I made a cardiovascular simulation in Matlab which included effects of gravity versus no gravity and effects on cerebrospinal fluid pressure.

In the two studies above, I used discrete electrical elements (resistors, capacitors, etc., sometimes non-linear, and with properties that change with time) in the cardiovascular models.

In the study "Application of 1D blood flow models..." (Journal of Biomechanics, 2011) we used transmission lines as well as discrete elements, to get insight into wave reflection issues in the circulation.