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Modeling Left Ventricular Blood Flow Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

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Abstract

This study aims to investigate the capability of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), a fully Lagrangian mesh-free method, to simulate the bulk blood flow dynamics in two realistic left ventricular (LV) models. Three dimensional geometries and motion of the LV, proximal left atrium and aortic root are extracted from cardiac magnetic resonance imaging and multi-slice computed tomography imaging data. SPH simulation results are analyzed and compared with those obtained using a traditional finite volume-based numerical method, and to in vivo phase contrast magnetic resonance imaging and echocardiography data, in terms of the large-scale blood flow phenomena usually clinically measured. A quantitative comparison of the velocity fields and global flow parameters between the in silico models and the in vivo data shows a reasonable agreement, given the inherent uncertainties and limitations in the modeling and imaging techniques. The results indicate the capability of SPH as a promising tool for predicting clinically relevant large-scale LV flow information.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the NIH HL104080 and HL127570 Grants. Andrés Caballero is in part supported by a Fulbright-Colciencias fellowship. Wenbin Mao and Liang Liang are in part supported by American Heart Association post-doctoral fellowships, 15POST25910002 and 16POST30210003, respectively. John Oshinski receives research grant support from Siemens Medical Solutions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Andrés Caballero, Wenbin Mao, Liang Liang, John Oshinski & Wei Sun

  2. Department of Radiology & Imaging Science, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    John Oshinski

  3. Cardiology Department, The Hartford Hospital, Hartford, CT, USA

    Charles Primiano & Raymond McKay

  4. Structural Heart & Valve Center, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA

    Susheel Kodali

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  1. Andrés Caballero
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Correspondence to Wei Sun.

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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5).

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Associate Editors Karyn Kunzelman and Ajit P. Yoganathan oversaw the review of this article.

Appendix

Appendix

Mesh Independence Study

Tests on mesh sensitivity were performed on the LV-CFD models by comparing results obtained with three different mesh densities: coarse (100,000, 150,000 elements), medium (200,000, 270,000 elements), and fine (500,000, 640,000 elements), for Subject 1 and Subject 2, respectively. The \(L_{1}\)- relative error norm (\(E_{L1}\)) of the instantaneous velocity profile along the LVOT plane center line at peak systole for Subject 1 was 8.6% between the coarse and fine meshes, and 4.8% between the medium and fine meshes. For Subject 2, \(E_{L1}\) was 5.2% between the coarse and fine meshes, and 3.9% between the medium and fine meshes. Similarly, \(E_{L1}\) of the instantaneous velocity profile along the MA plane centerline at the E-wave for Subject 1 was 10.3% between the coarse and fine meshes, and about 4.4% between the medium and fine meshes. For Subject 2, \(E_{L1}\) was 9.8% between the coarse and fine meshes, and 4.9% between the medium and fine meshes. A reasonable convergence was therefore achieved on the medium grid resolution in terms of the intraventricular flow field. Therefore, the CFD results presented in this study employed the medium mesh density (Fig. 11).

Figure 11
figure 11

Results of LV-CFD mesh sensitivity for Subject 1 (a, c), and Subject 2 (b, d) models.

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Caballero, A., Mao, W., Liang, L. et al. Modeling Left Ventricular Blood Flow Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics. Cardiovasc Eng Tech 8, 465–479 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13239-017-0324-z

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