A High Performance Pulsatile Pump for Aortic Flow Experiments in 3-Dimensional Models

Abstract

Aortic pathologies such as coarctation, dissection, and aneurysm represent a particularly emergent class of cardiovascular diseases. Computational simulations of aortic flows are growing increasingly important as tools for gaining understanding of these pathologies, as well as for planning their surgical repair. In vitro experiments are required to validate the simulations against real world data, and the experiments require a pulsatile flow pump system that can provide physiologic flow conditions characteristic of the aorta. We designed a newly capable piston-based pulsatile flow pump system that can generate high volume flow rates (850 mL/s), replicate physiologic waveforms, and pump high viscosity fluids against large impedances. The system is also compatible with a broad range of fluid types, and is operable in magnetic resonance imaging environments. Performance of the system was validated using image processing-based analysis of piston motion as well as particle image velocimetry. The new system represents a more capable pumping solution for aortic flow experiments than other available designs, and can be manufactured at a relatively low cost.

Alterations of Blood Flow Through Arteries Following Atherectomy and the Impact on Pressure Variation and Velocity

“…There has been a tremendous effort to perform FSI studies, for instance, 14,78 studied such interactions in conjunction with stent-related devices using numerical methods. Other works focused on fluid-tissue interactions 15,18,22,37,49,52 and in some cases used patient-specific images to attain realistic flow geometries. Recent work 43 used a statistical approach to investigate the relationship between stent design and hemodynamic performance.…”

Does the degree of coarctation of the aorta influence wall shear stress focal heterogeneity?

“…Experiments were conducted in a flow loop driven by a custom computer-controlled piston pump described in an earlier study [2]. The flow loop had three major components: the piston pump, an optically clear physical urethane CoA model, and a reservoir tank to receive the flow from each of the outlets, as in figure 1.…”

Arduino control of a pulsatile flow rig

“…To simulate physiologically realistic pulsatile flow, a dedicated pumping system is used in these experiments. This can either be a mock loop representing the full circulatory system [8,9], or a pump that reproduces a waveform measured locally in-vivo [4,5,6,7,12].…”

“…However, researchers often employ in-house built systems, for example because of cost considerations, or to add specific functionality. Examples of pumping systems that were developed to reproduce physiological waveforms are a gear pump driven by a stepper motor or servomotor, the rotation rate of which is controlled by a microcomputer (Hoskins et al [5]) or personal computer (Plewes et al [7]), a controlled piston pump (Chaudhury et al [4]), or a combination of both: a gear pump to deliver the steady flow component, and a piston pump to generate the pulsatile component (Tsai and Savaş [12]).…”