A Multiscale Electromechanical–Contact Framework for Intestinal Motility

  • Djoumessi, René Thierry (Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma)
  • Nagahawatte, Nipuni (Auckland Bioengineering Institute, University)
  • Paggi, Marco (IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca)
  • Cheng, Leo (Auckland Bioengineering Institute, University)
  • Gizzi, Alessio (Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma)

Please login to view abstract download link

Intestinal motility is a fundamental physiological process responsible for the transport and absorption of nutrients through complex motion patterns such as peristalsis and segmentation. Similar to the heart, the intestine is an active tissue whose contraction is triggered by electrical stimulation, involving a strong coupling between electrophysiology, mechanics, and tissue structure. These mechanisms are inherently multiscale, making the mathematical modeling of intestinal motility particularly challenging. Several electromechanical models have been proposed to investigate intestinal motility, providing valuable insights into the role of electrical activity and tissue mechanics. However, unlike the heart, the intestine is not constrained by a rigid structure such as the rib cage and can move within the abdominal cavity. As a consequence, intestinal deformation is frequently accompanied by non-negligible contact and self-contact phenomena, which have long been neglected in computational models. Only recently have a few studies begun to incorporate contact into electromechanical models of the intestine. In this work, we propose a generalized electromechanical framework for intestinal motility that explicitly accounts for contact phenomena. The model is based on the active strain approach to couple electrophysiological and mechanical processes, and on a contact formulation relying on the augmented Lagrangian method, enabling a unified treatment of both self-contact and contact with external bodies or surrounding organs. The governing equations are discretized using the finite element method and implemented through a staggered solution strategy within the open-source software GetFEM. The proposed framework allows the simulation of complex and clinically relevant scenarios, including intestinal self-contact, balloon dilation tests, and combined configurations involving simultaneous self-contact and balloon inflation. Numerical results are compared with in vivo experimental data obtained from porcine subjects, showing good agreement and demonstrating the ability of the model to realistically capture the mechanical response of the intestine during physiological conditions and interventional procedures.