Influence of prosthetic mitral valve orientation on left ventricular flow

The geometry and orientation of implantation of prosthetic heart valves have a major influence on the flow pattern in the left ventricle. Consequently, for developers of prosthetic heart valves, knowledge of flow properties in the ventricle is of great importance to optimization of designs and determination of the optimal orientation. The objective of this study is to analyse flow in a left ventricle model by means of an experimentally validated 3D computational method The computational method, using an arbitrary Euler-Lagrange finite element method to solve nonstationary Navier-Stokes equations for Newtonian fluids, was applied to two orientations of a model mitral valve prosthesis and showed significantly different flow fields for the two cases. Quantitative experimental measurements using particle image velocimetry were carried out to enable validation of the computational method.