Mechanical characterization of soft tissue in vivo by microstructural imaging and physics-informed neural networks: bridging the gap between biomechanics and clinical practice

General Information

Computational biomechanics is a fast-growing area of science. However, many of its fruits have not yet been translated into clinical practice. The main barrier to the translation of computational biomechanics into clinics is the lack of information about patient-specific mechanical properties of biological tissues. There are some methods for partially assessing these properties, but they have substantial limitations. A major cause of these limitations is the operating principle of current approaches, which rely on the analysis of the response of a tissue to some form of mechanical loading in vivo. To overcome this bottleneck, we propose a paradigm change. We aim at developing a new operating principle to infer mechanical properties of soft biological tissues in vivo. To this end, we leverage the synergy of three scientific areas: (i) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), (ii) experimental biomechanics, and (iii) physics-informed machine learning. Specifically, we aim at developing a new type of subvoxel MRI relaxometry to probe tissue microstructure non-invasively and establish a combined experimental and computational framework that will allow us to leverage this advanced MRI technique for the non-invasive determination of the mechanical properties of soft biological tissues. This approach can form a crucial steppingstone to translating biomechanical computational models into clinical practice at a large scale. As a proof of concept, we will demonstrate how our new method can support the diagnosis of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), one of the most common causes of mortality and morbidity.

This is a European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant for Prof. Dr. Christian Cyron, who is the lead Principle Investigator (PI) in this project, and for Prof. Dr. Gerhard A. Holzapfel at TU GRAZ and Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kozerke at ETH Zürich.

EU-Programme Acronym and Subprogramme Area	ERC-2024-SyG
Project Type	ERC Synergy Grant
Contract Number	Grant Agreement 101167207
Co-ordinator	Hereon (DE)

Funding for the Project (€)	Funding for Hereon (€)
9,991,449	2,728,169

Contact Person at Hereon

Prof. Dr. Christian Cyron, Institute of Material Systems Modeling, MS, phone +49 4152 87 2583 E-mail contact

Participants

Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (CH), Technische Universität Graz (AT)

Last Update: 03. September 2025