Zahra Motamed, McMaster University

Dr. Zahra K. Motamed directs Cardiovascular Research Group and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McMaster University. She is a member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario, with more than 25 years of experience in using and advancing engineering fundamentals to solve problems in a wide range of topics from industrial product development and commercialization to functions of biological systems. She has more than 17 years of experience in cardiovascular diseases and their devices from basic science to clinical research. Her research interests are mainly in the areas of translational and basic cardiovascular mechanics to develop long-needed quantitative diagnostic, predictive, and intervention-optimization tools for cardiovascular diseases to support personalized interventions and clinical decision making.  Her lab has a strong international collaborative network with clinical scientists, surgeons, and cardiologists in Canada, USA and Europe. Moreover, patient-specific non-invasive methods developed by her team are now used by their international collaborators in the USA and Europe.

Dr. Motamed has received an honorific award and has been recognized as the Joseph Ip Distinguished Engineering Fellow at McMaster. She served as the Chair of the 2021 NSERC Research Tool and Instruments (RTI) Selection Committee for Mechanical Engineering. She has been an invited speaker and a keynote speaker at national and international meetings. She serves on the editorial board of Scientific Reports - Nature and is also a member of the Editorial Board in the Journal of Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. She was a handling Editor in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine and a Guest Editor in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology in Novel methods to advance diagnostic and treatment value of medical imaging for cardiovascular disease. She is currently the invited lead Guest Editor of Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology: “Novel computational fluid dynamics methods for diagnosis, monitoring, prediction, and personalized treatment for cardiovascular disease and cancer metastasis” and an invited Guest Editor of Scientific Reports (a Nature journal) on “Computational Fluid Dynamics for the study of cardiovascular disease”. She has been a scientific consultant to a number of medical device companies.

The essential role of fluid dynamics modeling in future diagnosis and prediction of cardiovascular disease

The main functions of the cardiovascular system are to transport, control and maintain blood flow in the entire body. Abnormal hemodynamics greatly alters this tranquil picture, leading to initiation and progression of disease. These abnormalities are often manifested by disturbed fluid dynamics (local hemodynamics), and in many cases by an increase in the heart workload (global hemodynamics). Hemodynamics quantification can be greatly useful for accurate and early diagnosis but we still lack proper diagnostic methods for many cardiovascular diseases because the hemodynamics analysis methods that can be used as engines of new diagnostic tools are not well developed yet. Furthermore, as most interventions intend to recover the healthy condition, the ability to monitor and predict hemodynamics following particular interventions can have significant impacts on saving lives. Despite remarkable advances in medical imaging, imaging on its own is not predictive. Predictive methods are rare. They are extensions of diagnostic methods, enabling prediction of effects of interventions, allowing timely and personalized interventions, and helping critical clinical decision making about life-threatening risks based on quantitative data. Dr. Motamed and her team has developed innovative non-invasive image-based patient-specific diagnostic, monitoring and predictive computational-mechanics framework for patients with cardiovascular disease. Currently, none of the above metrics can be obtained noninvasively in patients in clinics and when invasive procedures are undertaken, the collected metrics cannot be by any means as complete as the results that Motamed lab’s framework provides at no risk to the patients.