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Diseases of the human circulatory system are the leading cause of mortality worldwide. Early diagnosis can significantly reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases and their consequences. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a computer-aided technology that can be applied in cardiology as a prognostic and diagnostic tool for specific diseases, based on analyzing blood flow patterns. One of the most challenging scenarios for computational modeling involves arteries whose shapes are altered by external factors.
An example of blood vessel shape change is the case of Myocardial Bridge (MB) [1]. MB is a congenital heart anomaly in which a section of the main coronary artery lies beneath the heart muscle and is compressed during the heart cycle. In this scenario, the flow pattern is influenced not only by pressures at the inlet and outlet of this section but also by shape changes in the blood vessel. For such cases, CFD must account for the dynamic shape changes during the cardiac cycle. However, there is a limited amount of research focused on validating CFD models in such scenarios.
In the presented research, the MB case was reproduced under laboratory conditions using an elastic conduit subjected to cyclic external stress while flow parameters were recorded. The same case was studied using the CFD technique, where selected data from the experiment were used as boundary conditions, and the remaining data were used for comparison with the model results. The study revealed significant differences between inlet and outlet flows during specific instants, attributed to the volume accumulation potential of the changing shape of the conduit. The model results aligned with the experimental data only when the dynamic shape of the tube was incorporated into the model.
This validation indicates that in cases such as MB, reconstructing the blood vessel's shape is crucial. As a next step, the shape of the blood vessel can be implemented into models using medical imaging, as demonstrated in [2].
References:
[1] Rogers IS, Tremmel JA, Schnittger I. Myocardial bridges: Overview of diagnosis and management. Congenital Heart Disease. 2017;12:619–623.
https://doi.org/10.1111/chd.12499
[2] Psiuk-Maksymowicz, K., Borys, D., et al. Methodology of generation of CFD meshes and 4D shape reconstruction of coronary arteries from patient-specific dynamic CT. Sci Rep. 14, 2201 (2024).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-52398-5
