The research area Computational Biomechanics and Mechanobiology mostly focuses on the musculoskeletal and vascular system, and tackles the interactions between tissue multiphysics and biological processes, and on how these interactions can affect the functional biomechanics of organs.

The synergic action of the tissues of the musculoskeletal system ensures the proper function of the different organs that provide structural support, flexibility and movement capacity to the human body. In turn, the proper maintenance of these tissues results from a fine dynamic balance among the physical, and biochemical cues that the tissue cells receive.

Numerical methods such as finite element modeling (FEM) are used to describe both organs and tissues. The further implementation of multiphysics tissue models provides unique communications with systems biology models such as agent-based models (ABM). The latter can capture the complexity of multifactorial inflammatory processes and eventual tissue maintenance or degradation changes through simulated gene regulation and enzyme production.

The know-how of the team is applied in different fields, for research and expert services:

• Exploration of tissue degeneration mechanisms in arthropaties and atherosclerosis (Figure 2a)
• Testing of clinical hypotheses in trauma and orthopedics (Figure 2b)
• Exploitation of clinical images for bone fracture prediction (Figure 2c)
• Design of in vitro cell experiments (Figure 2d)
• Development of synergies with other teams of BCN-MedTech towards patient-specific modelling (Figure 2e).