The paper presents the results of investigations concerning the noninvasive method of estimating the actual volume of the blood chamber of the POLVAD-EXT type ventricular assist device (VAD) during its operation. The proposed method is based on the principle of Helmholtz's acoustic resonance. Both the theory, main stages of the development of the measurement method as well as the practical implementation of the proposed method in the physical model of the POLVAD-EXT device are dealt with. The paper contains the results of static measurements by means of the proposed method (conducted at the Department of Optoelectronics, Silesian University of Technology) as well as the dynamic measurements taken at the Foundation of Cardiac Surgery Development (Zabrze, Poland) with the professional model of the human cardiovascular system. The results of these measurements prove that the proposed method allows to estimate the actual blood chamber volume with uncertainties below 10%.

In industrialized countries cardiovascular diseases are the major cause of death. The last clinical therapy option for some patients, suffering from terminal heart diseases, is donor heart transplantation. As the available number of donor organs is decreasing, many patients die while waiting for a transplant. For this reason Ventricular Assist Devices (VADs), which can mechanically support the human heart to achieve a sufficient perfusion of the body, are under development. For an implantable VAD, design constraints have to be deduced from the physiological conditions in the human body. In case of a VAD drive, these constraints are for example dimensions, electric losses, which might result in an overheating of blood, and a long durability. Therefore a hybrid permanent magnet hydrodynamic bearing is designed in this paper, which works passively and contactless. Based on Finite Element simulations of magnetic fields, various permanent magnet topologies are studied in terms of axial forces and stiffness.