Realistic boundary conditions in SimVascular through inlet catheter modeling

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Medical Imaging
• Computational Fluid Dynamics

Background:

• Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are crucial for understanding cardiovascular and vascular flows.
• Accurately modeling interventional devices like catheters is essential for simulating procedures such as tumor embolization.
• Existing CFD tools may not fully capture the complex fluid dynamics introduced by catheters.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) pipeline for SimVascular that incorporates the effects of catheter presence in vascular flow simulations.
• To enhance the simulation accuracy for interventional radiology procedures, particularly those involving therapeutic agent distribution.

Main Methods:

• Developed a pipeline to generate modified boundary condition files for SimVascular.
• The pipeline allows definition of catheter flow, velocity profile, radius, wall thickness, and vessel deviation.
• Simulated catheter effects by altering inlet boundary conditions in CFD models.

Main Results:

• Successfully created a pipeline for integrating catheter effects into SimVascular CFD simulations.
• Demonstrated that finer mesh density, especially near the catheter, improves velocity estimation accuracy.
• Qualitatively investigated the impact of catheter presence on blood flow in a patient-specific liver arterial model.

Conclusions:

• The developed pipeline effectively incorporates catheter effects into vascular CFD simulations.
• The method provides a valuable tool for improving the accuracy of simulations in interventional radiology.
• Further refinement with finer meshes can lead to more precise estimations of flow dynamics and agent distribution.