Myocardial material parameter estimation - A comparative study for simple shear

The study of ventricular mechanics-analyzing the distribution of strain and stress in myocardium throughout the cardiac cycle-is crucially dependent on the accuracy of the constitutive law chosen to represent the highly nonlinear and anisotropic properties of passive cardiac muscle. A number of such laws have been proposed and fitted to experimental measurements of stress-strain behavior. Here we examine five of these laws and compare them on the basis of (i) goodness of fit: How well they fit a set of six shear deformation tests, (ii) determinability: How well determined the objective function is at the optimal parameter fit, and (iii) variability: How well determined the material parameters are over the range of experiments. These criteria are utilized to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the constitutive laws.