The Physiome Model Repository 2.

MOTIVATION: The Physiome Model Repository 2 (PMR2) software was created as part of the IUPS Physiome Project (Hunter and Borg, 2003), and today it serves as the foundation for the CellML model repository. Key advantages brought to the end user by PMR2 include: facilities for model exchange, enhanced collaboration and a detailed change history for each model. AVAILABILITY: PMR2 is available under an open source license at http://www.cellml.org/tools/pmr/; a fully functional instance of this software can be accessed at http://models.physiomeproject.org/.

The Cardiac Atlas Project--an imaging database for computational modeling and statistical atlases of the heart.

MOTIVATION: Integrative mathematical and statistical models of cardiac anatomy and physiology can play a vital role in understanding cardiac disease phenotype and planning therapeutic strategies. However, the accuracy and predictive power of such models is dependent upon the breadth and depth of noninvasive imaging datasets. The Cardiac Atlas Project (CAP) has established a large-scale database of cardiac imaging examinations and associated clinical data in order to develop a shareable, web-accessible, structural and functional atlas of the normal and pathological heart for clinical, research and educational purposes. A goal of CAP is to facilitate collaborative statistical analysis of regional heart shape and wall motion and characterize cardiac function among and within population groups. RESULTS: Three main open-source software components were developed: (i) a database with web-interface; (ii) a modeling client for 3D + time visualization and parametric description of shape and motion; and (iii) open data formats for semantic characterization of models and annotations. The database was implemented using a three-tier architecture utilizing MySQL, JBoss and Dcm4chee, in compliance with the DICOM standard to provide compatibility with existing clinical networks and devices. Parts of Dcm4chee were extended to access image specific attributes as search parameters. To date, approximately 3000 de-identified cardiac imaging examinations are available in the database. All software components developed by the CAP are open source and are freely available under the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1 (http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.txt). AVAILABILITY: http://www.cardiacatlas.org CONTACT: a.young@auckland.ac.nz SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

FieldML, a proposed open standard for the Physiome project for mathematical model representation.

The FieldML project has made significant progress towards the goal of addressing the need to have open standards and open source software for representing finite element method (FEM) models and, more generally, multivariate field models, such as many of the models that are core to the euHeart project and the Physiome project. FieldML version 0.5 is the most recently released format from the FieldML project. It is an XML format that already has sufficient capability to represent the majority of euHeart's explicit models such as the anatomical FEM models and simulation solution fields. The details of FieldML version 0.5 are presented, as well as its limitations and some discussion of the progress being made to address these limitations.

Declarative representation of uncertainty in mathematical models.

An important aspect of multi-scale modelling is the ability to represent mathematical models in forms that can be exchanged between modellers and tools. While the development of languages like CellML and SBML have provided standardised declarative exchange formats for mathematical models, independent of the algorithm to be applied to the model, to date these standards have not provided a clear mechanism for describing parameter uncertainty. Parameter uncertainty is an inherent feature of many real systems. This uncertainty can result from a number of situations, such as: when measurements include inherent error; when parameters have unknown values and so are replaced by a probability distribution by the modeller; when a model is of an individual from a population, and parameters have unknown values for the individual, but the distribution for the population is known. We present and demonstrate an approach by which uncertainty can be described declaratively in CellML models, by utilising the extension mechanisms provided in CellML. Parameter uncertainty can be described declaratively in terms of either a univariate continuous probability density function or multiple realisations of one variable or several (typically non-independent) variables. We additionally present an extension to SED-ML (the Simulation Experiment Description Markup Language) to describe sampling sensitivity analysis simulation experiments. We demonstrate the usability of the approach by encoding a sample model in the uncertainty markup language, and by developing a software implementation of the uncertainty specification (including the SED-ML extension for sampling sensitivty analyses) in an existing CellML software library, the CellML API implementation. We used the software implementation to run sampling sensitivity analyses over the model to demonstrate that it is possible to run useful simulations on models with uncertainty encoded in this form.