Due to an aging population, the demand for prosthetic heart valves and other heart devices is increasing. Prostheses are designed to imitate a real, healthy heart valve and support blood circulation in the body. However, many of them are leaking around the valves therefore, engineers are working to improve these designs. In doing so, the prosthesis have to be tested several times first in tabletop simulators and then in animal experiments before they can be used in humans. This is a laborious and expensive process.

The developed bionic "heart" is a real biological heart whose tough muscle tissue has been replaced by a soft robot matrix of artificial heart muscles that resembles an air cushion foil. The alignment of the artificial muscles imitates the pattern of the natural heart muscle fibers.

The work was published in the journal Science Robotics.

Further information:
http://news.mit.edu/2020/bionic-heart-prosthetic-valve-cardiac-0129