Hi,
I am new to the physics-based human physiology engines and am trying to understand the differences between Pulse Physiology Engine and BioGears? It appears as though Pulse is a forked version of BioGears? Are there other key differences between the softwares?
Also, is Pulse still in development and adding new features? I would like to know if it is still a supported to determine if it is a good fit for integrating with another model.
Thanks!
Hi rhingo
Pulse was forked in 2017 off of BioGears 6.1
Rachel, Jeff, and I were all the original physiology, integration, and software leads for BioGears.
You can read about that at the bottom of our FAQ
Pulse is in active development, we will release our 4.2 version in the coming weeks
If you need a release candidate build, I can help you out
Check out all the major improvements for our upcoming release as well as other releases since our fork here
https://gitlab.kitware.com/physiology/engine/-/blob/feature/documentation/docs/Markdown/Versioning.md
To make an informed decision, it would be good to know what kind of model you would like to integrate and how to help isoloate and evaluate the systems you would need for that model.
Happy to help answer any questions you have.
Thank you for the quick response! That is very helpful to know.
To give a bit more context, I am interested in integrating musculoskeletal models with the physiological models implemented in Pulse. Specifically, I would like to better understand how does neuromuscular function change in different environments. I imagine we could leverage the Environment and Energy models to do simulate this where the ‘Exercise’ in the Energy model could be driven by our other simulation. Similarly the outputs from the Energy and Environment model would likely inform the fatigue levels in our musculoskeletal model. Since both BioGears and Pulse have both of these models, I was trying to understand what key differences exist between these models and whether one is more validated than the other.
If you have any input on whether you think the systems I mentioned above seem appropriate, I would really appreciate it!
This sounds like a very good appliction/study.
The energy/exercise systems between Pulse and BioGears do have some significant differences.
Enough so that we have gotten a mixed response between users prefering one or the other.
We do understand the differences between the two (differences in cardiac output over high intensity exercise) and are planning to update our model with improvements that should lead to a better model that meets the validation requirements for both programs.
I am confident of our respiratory and enviroment system updates being able to represent both healthy and unhealthy patients in various environmental conditions. We have also performed quite a bit of updates to ensure we can produce valid patients between a wide variety of parameters (height/weight/sex/hr/map/etc.)
I would suggest taking a look at our Pulse Explorer to experiment with some exercise scenarios to make sure our scope of exercise meets your needs.