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Updated: Oct 2, 2025
Assessment of Cardiac Morphological and Functional Changes in Mouse Model of Transverse Aortic Constriction by Echocardiographic Imaging
Published on: June 21, 2016
Unlocking the Non-invasive Assessment of Conduit and Reservoir Function in the Aorta : The Obstructive Descending
Adelaide de Vecchi1, Alessandro Faraci1, Joao Filipe Fernandes1
1School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King's College London, 5th Floor Becket House, Lambeth Palace Road, London, SE1 7EU, UK.
Abstract:
Aortic surgeries in congenital conditions, such as hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), aim to restore and maintain the conduit and reservoir functions of the aorta. We proposed a method to assess these two functions based on 4D flow MRI, and we applied it to study the aorta in pre-Fontan HLHS. Ten pre-Fontan HLHS patients and six age-matched controls were studied to derive the advective pressure difference and viscous dissipation for conduit function, and pulse wave velocity and elastic modulus for reservoir function. The reconstructed neo-aorta in HLHS subjects achieved a good conduit function at a cost of an impaired reservoir function (69.7% increase of elastic modulus). The native descending HLHS aorta displayed enhanced reservoir (elastic modulus being 18.4% smaller) but impaired conduit function (three-fold increase in peak advection). A non-invasive and comprehensive assessment of aortic conduit and reservoir functions is feasible and has potentially clinical relevance in congenital vascular conditions.
