Abernethy, Shawn2014-02-202014-02-202013http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/12862The goal of the Norwood procedure is to provide systemic circulation in a cardiovascular system with a single ventricle. This procedure is universally performed on the patient population of newborns with a underdeveloped left ventricle, Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). Two alternative surgical methods are employed to provide the pulmonary circulation, Right Ventricle-Pulmonary Artery Conduit method and the Blalock-Taussig Shunt method. The objective of this study is to take a previous compartment model of the two cardiovascular systems, verify the physiology and accuracy of the system of ordinary differential equations, implement a simulator based on the mathematical model, and evaluate the model's capacity to produce a realistic right ventricular pressure-volume loop. A MATLAB based software tool was written to model both procedures and provide a graphical user interface for others in clinical practice. An optimizer was used to adjust the parameters in order to produce a pressure-volume loop comparable to expectations. Once a reasonable P-V loop was obtained for each model, the physiological realism of the model was analyzed to discover its validity and limitations.Heart -- Left ventricle -- Surgery -- Computer simulation.Heart -- Left ventricle -- Surgery -- Mathematical models.Cardiovascular system -- Computer simulation.Cardiovascular system -- Mathematical models.Thesis