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Assessment of boundary conditions for CFD simulation in human carotid artery

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Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an increasingly used method for investigation of hemodynamic parameters and their alterations under pathological conditions, which are important indicators for diagnosis of cardiovascular disease. In hemodynamic simulation models, the employment of appropriate boundary conditions (BCs) determines the computational accuracy of the CFD simulation in comparison with pressure and velocity measurements. In this study, we have first assessed the influence of inlet boundary conditions on hemodynamic CFD simulations. We selected two typical patients suspected of carotid artery disease, with mild stenosis and severe stenosis. Both patients underwent digital subtraction angiography (DSA), magnetic resonance angiography, and the invasive pressure guide wire measured pressure profile. We have performed computational experiments to (1) study the hemodynamic simulation outcomes of distributions of wall shear stress, pressure, pressure gradient and (2) determine the differences in hemodynamic performances caused by inlet BCs derived from DSA and Womersley analytical solution. Our study has found that the difference is related to the severity of the stenosis; the greater the stenosis, the more the difference ensues. Further, in our study, the two typical subjects with invasively measured pressure profile and thirty subjects with ultrasound Doppler velocimeter (UDV) measurement served as the criteria to evaluate the hemodynamic outcomes of wall shear stress, pressure, pressure gradient and velocity due to different outlet BCs based on the Windkessel model, structured-tree model, and fully developed flow model. According to the pressure profiles, the fully developed model appeared to have more fluctuations compared with the other two models. The Windkessel model had more singularities before convergence. The three outlet BCs models also showed good correlation with the UDV measurement, while the Windkessel model appeared to be slightly better (\( R^{2} = 0.942 \)). The structured-tree model was seen to have the best performance in terms of available computational cost and accuracy. The results of our numerical simulation and the good correlation with the computed pressure and velocity with their measurements have highlighted the effectiveness of CFD simulation in patient-specific human carotid artery with suspected stenosis.

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Abbreviations

CFD:

Computational fluid dynamics

DSA:

Digital subtraction angiography

MRI:

Magnetic resonance imaging

UDV:

Ultrasound Doppler Velocimeter

MRA:

Magnetic resonance angiography

ST model:

Structured-tree model

CCA:

Common carotid artery

ICA:

Internal carotid artery)

ECA:

External carotid artery

WSS:

Wall shear stress

CTP:

Computed tomographic perfusion

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part, by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC1301700),Science technology and innovation committee of Shenzhen for research projects (Grant JCYJ20151030151431727, JCYJ20170413114916687, SGLH20161212104605195, and JCYJ20170307165309009), the Guangzhou Science and Technology Planning Project (No. 201704020079), the South Wisdom Valley Innovation Team Plan (2015CXTD05), the National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program) SS2015AA020109, and the National Natural science Foundational of China (Grant 61771464).

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  1. Pengcheng Xu, Xin Liu, and Heye Zhang have contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Medical Biomechanics, School of Basic Medical Science, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510515, China

    Pengcheng Xu, Xin Liu & Wenhua Huang

  2. School of Biomedical Engineering, Sun Yat-Sen University, Shenzhen, 510006, China

    Heye Zhang

  3. University 2020 Foundation, Northborough, MA, 01532, USA

    Dhanjoo Ghista

  4. Department of Medical Imaging Center, The First Affiliated Hospital, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510630, China

    Dong Zhang & Changzheng Shi

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  1. Pengcheng Xu
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Correspondence to Wenhua Huang.

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Xu, P., Liu, X., Zhang, H. et al. Assessment of boundary conditions for CFD simulation in human carotid artery. Biomech Model Mechanobiol 17, 1581–1597 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-018-1045-4

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