Patient-specific modelling of whole heart anatomy, dynamics and haemodynamics from four-dimensional cardiac CT images

Abstract

There is a growing need for patient-specific and holistic modelling of the heart to support comprehensive disease assessment and intervention planning as well as prediction of therapeutic outcomes. We propose a patient-specific model of the whole human heart, which integrates morphology, dynamics and haemodynamic parameters at the organ level. The modelled cardiac structures are robustly estimated from four-dimensional cardiac computed tomography (CT), including all four chambers and valves as well as the ascending aorta and pulmonary artery. The patient-specific geometry serves as an input to a three-dimensional Navier -Stokes solver that derives realistic haemodynamics, constrained by the local anatomy, along the entire heart cycle. We evaluated our framework with various heart pathologies and the results correlate with relevant literature reports.

Image-based large-eddy simulation in a realistic left heart

“…The other part of the vortex ring is marginally affected and thus remains almost intact, moving towards the apex of the ventricle, as described in the literature [39].…”

“…Different research teams have developed IB-CFD methods for heart flows, more specifically to study the left ventricle alone [35,36,37,38]. Recently, more advanced work has been published, using a full heart model obtained from CT images [39] or a heart model fed from MR images [40]. The feasibility of cardiac IB-CFD has been shown, but the flow results notably suffered from limited spatial resolution or partial geometries (LV only in the majority of the cases).…”

“…However, for high stress levels and in large vessels, non-Newtonian effects are usually neglected and blood is usually modelled as an incompressible Newtonian fluid in numerical simulations [24,39]. Taking the incompressible flow assumption into account and assuming blood as a Newtonian fluid, the fluid motion is described by the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations.…”

Hemodynamic Assessment of Pre- and Post-operative Aortic Coarctation from MRI

“…We solve the pressure projection Poisson equation using an efficient implicit multi-grid preconditioned conjugate gradient solver. The boundary conditions for the velocity are Dirichlet in the Inlet cells, no-slip (Dirichlet) in the Wall cells, and Neumann in the Outlet cells [16]. We use a variable-in-time flat inlet velocity profile, and outlet pressure boundary conditions provided by the axisymmetric 1D simulations.…”

Virtual Reality Surgery Simulation: A Survey on Patient Specific Solution

“…It presents the potential for surgeons to practice the surgical procedure preoperatively using VR simulator with the precise anatomy structure and its dynamics for an individual patient [46]. This concept would improve the accuracy of diagnosis and treatment, enhance the predictability of VR based surgery simulation framework, and raise the patient care [4,40,44]. In recent years, several surgical systems in laparoscopic nephrectomy [38], wrist joint [18,19], hepatectomy and pancreatectomy [17] have combined the patient specific characteristics into the simulator.…”