Validation Platform for Development of Computational Fluid Dynamics of Intra-Cardiac Blood-Flow

This study is an initial evaluation of a validation platform for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) pipelines made for human intra-cardiac flow estimation. The pipelines use image-based prescribed geometry CFD from computed tomography angiography (CTA). In this study the CTA provides approximately 20 volumetric images within one cardiac cycle. The validation platform consists of a dynamic heart phantom which mimics the human heart in CTA and ultrasound (US) measurements. The flow inside the phantom right ventricle (RV) was measured using two methods: 1) a novel CFD pipeline applied using the CTA data (3D+time). 2) US vector flow imaging (VFI) measured directly on the phantom (2D+time). The CFD and VFI are compared quantitatively by comparing point evaluations (line averages) of the in-plane fluid velocity magnitude. The similarity of the line averages, assessed from plots, is found to be depending on the spatial position of the lines. Some positions are very similar in CFD and VFI and some are not. Furthermore a qualitatively comparison is made by plotting the corresponding 2D slices of the vector fields which confirms the quantitative assessment: the overall flow patterns are similar but not everywhere.