Mussallem CHD Alliance launches 3D cardiac modeling collaboration

The Mussallem CHD Alliance has formed a national collaboration with major children’s hospitals to help standardize the process of building 3D cardiac models for patients born with congenital heart defects.

The P3-CHD project is joined by Boston Children’s Hospital, Stanford Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The goal is to wield each institution’s capabilities for personalizing surgical planning, and then making them available for a nationwide approach.

Taking two-dimensional patient scans and converting them into full visualizations of complex anatomy can not only prepare the surgeon before entering the operating room, but also help guide them in real time during the procedure. However, processes can vary widely between centers, spanning 3D-printed physical models and virtual simulations.

“If we are successful in scaling this tool across the field, it could transform the nature of how congenital heart surgery gets performed for children with CHD,” said Orin Herskowitz, president of the Mussallem CHD Alliance, which was formed by the Mussallem Foundation in September 2025.

“These 3D models coupled with the extensive preoperative planning that we are now able to do with virtual surgery and flow simulation have been transformative in how we care for many of our complex patients,” added Dr. David Hoganson, cardiac surgeon and director of the computational 3D visualization program at Boston Children’s.

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In the future, the group hopes to obtain an FDA clearance for a software platform built specifically for CHD care. In the meantime, the collaboration will offer hospitals without in-house capabilities the opportunity to access their expertise.

“Collaboratively building software and simulation tools dedicated to informing successful repairs for kids with congenital heart disease everywhere is a dream come true for our team,” said Dr. Matthew Jolley, the Topolewski Endowed Chair in Pediatric Cardiology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.