Distributed lumped parameter modeling of blood flow in compliant vessels

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Computational Fluid Dynamics
• Cardiovascular Modeling

Background:

• Traditional 1D Navier-Stokes (NS) models often lack accuracy in simulating blood flow dynamics, especially in diseased vasculature.
• Existing modeling techniques may not fully capture the complex interplay between blood flow and vessel wall mechanics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To enhance the distributed lumped parameter (DLP) modeling approach by incorporating blood vessel wall deformability.
• To evaluate the accuracy and efficiency of the enhanced DLP model against 1D NS and 3D fluid-structure interaction (FSI) models.

Main Methods:

• Extended the previous DLP modeling framework by introducing a compliance term for each vascular segment, based on 1D NS equations.
• Validated the proposed DLP approach using idealized and patient-specific vascular models.
• Compared DLP results with established 1D NS and 3D FSI modeling techniques.

Main Results:

• The enhanced DLP model demonstrated consistently accurate flow and pressure waveforms when compared to 3D FSI simulations.
• 1D NS modeling showed significant inaccuracies in predicting flow and pressure dynamics in diseased vascular cases.
• The proposed DLP approach offers a balance of accuracy and computational efficiency.

Conclusions:

• The DLP modeling approach, incorporating vessel wall deformability, provides a more accurate and reliable method for studying hemodynamics.
• This enhanced DLP model can potentially replace or augment existing 1D and 3D modeling techniques for diverse cardiovascular applications.
• The DLP method presents a computationally efficient alternative for detailed hemodynamic analysis.