@article{AndresArconesWeiserKoutsourelakisetal.2023, author = {Andr{\´e}s Arcones, Daniel and Weiser, Martin and Koutsourelakis, Faidon-Stelios and Unger, J{\"o}rg F.}, title = {A Bayesian Framework for Simulation-based Digital Twins of Bridges}, volume = {6}, journal = {EUROSTRUCT 2023:European Association on Quality Control of Bridges and Structures: Digital Transformation in Sustainability}, number = {5}, doi = {10.1002/cepa.2177}, pages = {734 -- 740}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Simulation-based digital twins have emerged as a powerful tool for evaluating the mechanical response of bridges. As virtual representations of physical systems, digital twins can provide a wealth of information that complements traditional inspection and monitoring data. By incorporating virtual sensors and predictive maintenance strategies, they have the potential to improve our understanding of the behavior and performance of bridges over time. However, as bridges age and undergo regular loading and extreme events, their structural characteristics change, often differing from the predictions of their initial design. Digital twins must be continuously adapted to reflect these changes. In this article, we present a Bayesian framework for updating simulation-based digital twins in the context of bridges. Our approach integrates information from measurements to account for inaccuracies in the simulation model and quantify uncertainties. Through its implementation and assessment, this work demonstrates the potential for digital twins to provide a reliable and up-to-date representation of bridge behavior, helping to inform decision-making for maintenance and management.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{AndresArconesWeiserKoutsourelakisetal.2023, author = {Andr{\´e}s Arcones, Daniel and Weiser, Martin and Koutsourelakis, Faidon-Stelios and Unger, J{\"o}rg F.}, title = {Evaluation of Model Bias Identification Approaches Based on Bayesian Inference and Applications to Digital Twins}, booktitle = {5th ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Uncertainty Quantification in Computational Sciences and Engineering}, pages = {1 -- 15}, year = {2023}, abstract = {In recent years, the use of simulation-based digital twins for monitoring and assessment of complex mechanical systems has greatly expanded. Their potential to increase the information obtained from limited data makes them an invaluable tool for a broad range of real-world applications. Nonetheless, there usually exists a discrepancy between the predicted response and the measurements of the system once built. One of the main contributors to this difference in addition to miscalibrated model parameters is the model error. Quantifying this socalled model bias (as well as proper values for the model parameters) is critical for the reliable performance of digital twins. Model bias identification is ultimately an inverse problem where information from measurements is used to update the original model. Bayesian formulations can tackle this task. Including the model bias as a parameter to be inferred enables the use of a Bayesian framework to obtain a probability distribution that represents the uncertainty between the measurements and the model. Simultaneously, this procedure can be combined with a classic parameter updating scheme to account for the trainable parameters in the original model. This study evaluates the effectiveness of different model bias identification approaches based on Bayesian inference methods. This includes more classical approaches such as direct parameter estimation using MCMC in a Bayesian setup, as well as more recent proposals such as stat-FEM or orthogonal Gaussian Processes. Their potential use in digital twins, generalization capabilities, and computational cost is extensively analyzed.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{GanderKrauseWeiseretal.2023, author = {Gander, Lia and Krause, Rolf and Weiser, Martin and Costabal, Francisco and Pezzuto, Simone}, title = {On the Accuracy of Eikonal Approximations in Cardiac Electrophysiology in the Presence of Fibrosis}, volume = {13958}, booktitle = {Functional Imaging and Modeling of the Heart. FIMH 2023.}, publisher = {Springer, Cham}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-35302-4_14}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Fibrotic tissue is one of the main risk factors for cardiac arrhythmias. It is therefore a key component in computational studies. In this work, we compare the monodomain equation to two eikonal models for cardiac electrophysiology in the presence of fibrosis. We show that discontinuities in the conductivity field, due to the presence of fibrosis, introduce a delay in the activation times. The monodomain equation and eikonal-diffusion model correctly capture these delays, contrarily to the classical eikonal equation. Importantly, a coarse space discretization of the monodomain equation amplifies these delays, even after accounting for numerical error in conduction velocity. The numerical discretization may also introduce artificial conduction blocks and hence increase propagation complexity. Therefore, some care is required when comparing eikonal models to the discretized monodomain equation.}, language = {en} } @article{SubramaniamHubigMuggenthaleretal.2023, author = {Subramaniam, Jayant S. and Hubig, Michael and Muggenthaler, Holger and Schenkl, Sebastian and Ullrich, Julia and Pourtier, Gr{\´e}groire and Weiser, Martin and Mall, Gita}, title = {Sensitivity of temperature-based time since death estimation on measurement location}, volume = {137}, journal = {International Journal of Legal Medicine}, doi = {10.1007/s00414-023-03040-y}, pages = {1815 -- 1837}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Rectal temperature measurement (RTM) from crime scenes is an important parameter for temperature-based time of death estimation (TDE). Various influential variables exist in TDE methods like the uncertainty in thermal and environmental parameters. Although RTM depends in particular on the location of measurement position, this relationship has never been investigated separately. The presented study fills this gap using Finite Element (FE) simulations of body cooling. A manually meshed coarse human FE model and an FE geometry model developed from the CT scan of a male corpse are used for TDE sensitivity analysis. The coarse model is considered with and without a support structure of moist soil. As there is no clear definition of ideal rectal temperature measurement location for TDE, possible variations in RTM location (RTML) are considered based on anatomy and forensic practice. The maximum variation of TDE caused by RTML changes is investigated via FE simulation. Moreover, the influence of ambient temperature, of FE model change and of the models positioning on a wet soil underground are also discussed. As a general outcome, we notice that maximum TDE deviations of up to ca. 2-3 h due to RTML deviations have to be expected. The direction of maximum influence of RTML change on TDE generally was on the line caudal to cranial.}, language = {en} } @article{SemlerWeiser2023, author = {Semler, Phillip and Weiser, Martin}, title = {Adaptive Gaussian Process Regression for Efficient Building of Surrogate Models in Inverse Problems}, volume = {39}, journal = {Inverse Problems}, number = {12}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2303.05824}, doi = {10.1088/1361-6420/ad0028}, pages = {125003}, year = {2023}, abstract = {In a task where many similar inverse problems must be solved, evaluating costly simulations is impractical. Therefore, replacing the model y with a surrogate model y(s) that can be evaluated quickly leads to a significant speedup. The approximation quality of the surrogate model depends strongly on the number, position, and accuracy of the sample points. With an additional finite computational budget, this leads to a problem of (computer) experimental design. In contrast to the selection of sample points, the trade-off between accuracy and effort has hardly been studied systematically. We therefore propose an adaptive algorithm to find an optimal design in terms of position and accuracy. Pursuing a sequential design by incrementally appending the computational budget leads to a convex and constrained optimization problem. As a surrogate, we construct a Gaussian process regression model. We measure the global approximation error in terms of its impact on the accuracy of the identified parameter and aim for a uniform absolute tolerance, assuming that y(s) is computed by finite element calculations. A priori error estimates and a coarse estimate of computational effort relate the expected improvement of the surrogate model error to computational effort, resulting in the most efficient combination of sample point and evaluation tolerance. We also allow for improving the accuracy of already existing sample points by continuing previously truncated finite element solution procedures.}, language = {en} } @article{UllrichWeiserSubramaniametal.2023, author = {Ullrich, Julia and Weiser, Martin and Subramaniam, Jayant and Schenkl, Sebastian and Muggenthaler, Holger and Hubig, Michael and Mall, Gita}, title = {The impact of anatomy variation on temperature based time of death estimation}, volume = {137}, journal = {International Journal of Legal Medicine}, doi = {10.1007/s00414-023-03026-w}, pages = {1615 -- 1627}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Temperature-based time of death estimation (TTDE) using simulation methods such as the finite element (FE) method promises higher accuracy and broader applicability in nonstandard cooling scenarios than established phenomenological methods. Their accuracy depends crucially on the simulation model to capture the actual situation. The model fidelity in turn hinges on the representation of the corpse's anatomy in form of computational meshes as well as on the thermodynamic parameters. While inaccuracies in anatomy representation due to coarse mesh resolution are known to have a minor impact on the estimated time of death, the sensitivity with respect to larger differences in the anatomy has so far not been studied. We assess this sensitivity by comparing four independently generated and vastly different anatomical models in terms of the estimated time of death in an identical cooling scenario. In order to isolate the impact of shape variation, the models are scaled to a reference size, and the possible impact of measurement location variation is excluded explicitly, which gives a lower bound on the impact of anatomy on the estimated time of death.}, language = {en} } @article{HuynhCheginiPavarinoetal.2023, author = {Huynh, Ngoc and Chegini, Fatemeh and Pavarino, Luca and Weiser, Martin and Scacchi, Simone}, title = {Convergence analysis of BDDC preconditioners for hybrid DG discretizations of the cardiac cell-by-cell model}, volume = {45}, journal = {SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing}, number = {6}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2212.12295}, pages = {A2836 -- A2857}, year = {2023}, abstract = {A Balancing Domain Decomposition by Constraints (BDDC) preconditioner is constructed and analyzed for the solution of hybrid Discontinuous Galerkin discretizations of reaction-diffusion systems of ordinary and partial differential equations arising in cardiac cell-by-cell models. The latter are different from the classical Bidomain and Monodomain cardiac models based on homogenized descriptions of the cardiac tissue at the macroscopic level, and therefore they allow the representation of individual cardiac cells, cell aggregates, damaged tissues and nonuniform distributions of ion channels on the cell membrane. The resulting discrete cell-by-cell models have discontinuous global solutions across the cell boundaries, hence the proposed BDDC preconditioner is based on appropriate dual and primal spaces with additional constraints which transfer information between cells (subdomains) without influencing the overall discontinuity of the global solution. A scalable convergence rate bound is proved for the resulting BDDC cell-by-cell preconditioned operator, while numerical tests validate this bound and investigate its dependence on the discretization parameters.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{SteyerCheginiPotseetal.2023, author = {Steyer, Joshua and Chegini, Fatemeh and Potse, Mark and Loewe, Axel and Weiser, Martin}, title = {Continuity of Microscopic Cardiac Conduction in a Computational Cell-by-Cell Model}, volume = {50}, booktitle = {2023 Computing in Cardiology Conference (CinC)}, publisher = {Computing in Cardiology}, issn = {2325-887X}, doi = {10.22489/CinC.2023.385}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Conduction velocity in cardiac tissue is a crucial electrophysiological parameter for arrhythmia vulnerability. Pathologically reduced conduction velocity facilitates arrhythmogenesis because such conduction velocities decrease the wavelength with which re-entry may occur. Computational studies on CV and how it changes regionally in models at spatial scales multiple times larger than actual cardiac cells exist. However, microscopic conduction within cells and between them have been studied less in simulations. In this work, we study the relation of microscopic conduction patterns and clinically observable macroscopic conduction using an extracellular-membrane-intracellular model which represents cardiac tissue with these subdomains at subcellular resolution. By considering cell arrangement and non-uniform gap junction distribution, it yields anisotropic excitation propagation. This novel kind of model can for example be used to understand how discontinuous conduction on the microscopic level affects fractionation of electrograms in healthy and fibrotic tissue. Along the membrane of a cell, we observed a continuously propagating activation wavefront. When transitioning from one cell to the neighbouring one, jumps in local activation times occurred, which led to lower global conduction velocities than locally within each cell.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{CheginiFroehlyHuynhetal.2023, author = {Chegini, Fatemeh and Froehly, Algiane and Huynh, Ngoc Mai Monica and Pavarino, Luca and Potse, Mark and Scacchi, Simone and Weiser, Martin}, title = {Efficient numerical methods for simulating cardiac electrophysiology with cellular resolution}, booktitle = {10th Int. Conf. Computational Methods for Coupled Problems in Science and Engineering 2023}, doi = {10.23967/c.coupled.2023.004}, year = {2023}, abstract = {The cardiac extracellular-membrane-intracellular (EMI) model enables the precise geometrical representation and resolution of aggregates of individual myocytes. As a result, it not only yields more accurate simulations of cardiac excitation compared to homogenized models but also presents the challenge of solving much larger problems. In this paper, we introduce recent advancements in three key areas: (i) the creation of artificial, yet realistic grids, (ii) efficient higher-order time stepping achieved by combining low-overhead spatial adaptivity on the algebraic level with progressive spectral deferred correction methods, and (iii) substructuring domain decomposition preconditioners tailored to address the complexities of heterogeneous problem structures. The efficiency gains of these proposed methods are demonstrated through numerical results on cardiac meshes of different sizes.}, language = {en} } @article{BartelsFisikopoulosWeiser2023, author = {Bartels, Tinko and Fisikopoulos, Vissarion and Weiser, Martin}, title = {Fast Floating-Point Filters for Robust Predicates}, volume = {63}, journal = {BIT Numerical Mathematics}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2208.00497}, doi = {10.1007/s10543-023-00975-x}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Geometric predicates are at the core of many algorithms, such as the construction of Delaunay triangulations, mesh processing and spatial relation tests. These algorithms have applications in scientific computing, geographic information systems and computer-aided design. With floating-point arithmetic, these geometric predicates can incur round-off errors that may lead to incorrect results and inconsistencies, causing computations to fail. This issue has been addressed using a combination of exact arithmetic for robustness and floating-point filters to mitigate the computational cost of exact computations. The implementation of exact computations and floating-point filters can be a difficult task, and code generation tools have been proposed to address this. We present a new C++ meta-programming framework for the generation of fast, robust predicates for arbitrary geometric predicates based on polynomial expressions. We combine and extend different approaches to filtering, branch reduction, and overflow avoidance that have previously been proposed. We show examples of how this approach produces correct results for data sets that could lead to incorrect predicate results with naive implementations. Our benchmark results demonstrate that our implementation surpasses state-of-the-art implementations.}, language = {en} }