Background: Worldwide the number of heart failure patients exceeds 23 million, in which 5-10% of total heart failure patients may become unresponsive to conventional treatments. Although heart transplantation is a gold standard of treatment for heart failure, heart transplantation is limited by the availability of donor hearts. Fortunately, rapid advances in technology have enabled durable mechanical circulatory support emerged as an increasingly viable therapeutic option for treatment of heart failure patients as bridge to heart transplantation, or life time support as destination therapy. These mechanical circulatory support devices provide effective hemodynamic support, high device reliability and significant improvements in patient status. However mechanical circulatory support therapy is accompanied severe adverse complications including pump thrombosis, bleeding, stroke, and right ventricle failure, which are mainly associated with the electromagnetic actuators.

Methods: To develop a ventricular assist device with low rate of adverse complications, several actuating technologies are investigated in terms of response time, thrust force, weight, volume, and controllability. No commercial product is available meeting the requirements. To explore the feasibility of ultrasonic motors, the long lifetime drive of traveling wave ultrasonic motors, heat dissipation, and stable vibration tracking technologies are investigated to be the actuator of ventricular assist devices. Finally, a pulsatile blood pump prototype is developed and investigated in a mocked circulatory system.

Results: A flow of 5L/min is achieved with an average after load of 100mmHg with a size close to the continuous flow ventricle assist device. A shifting vortex flow is found in blood chamber to form a persistent rotational flow pattern through the cardiac cycle，similar to the blood flow in the left ventricle.

Ming Yang is currently a professor in the Department of Instrument Science, School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University. In 1996, he received a doctorate degree in precision machinery and instruments from Tianjin University. From 1996 to 1998, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center of Ultrasound Motor Research, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. From 2002 to 2005, he worked on the application of artificial heart muscle ultrasound devices as a research fellow at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. Since joining Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2005, he has mainly engaged in the research of intelligent artificial heart assistance, ultrasound technology and detection technology. He has been principle investigators on some National Natural Science Foundation projects, including the special fund for basic research of scientific instruments, and one from 863 high-tech projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology. Up to now, more than 20 invention patents have been authorized, and about 60 papers have been published in academic journals. Relevant research has been reported by China Science and Technology Daily.