Verification Study of In Silico Computed Intracardiac Blood Flow With 4D Flow MRI

Major challenges for clinical applications of in silico medicine are limitations in time and computational resources. Computational approaches should therefore be tailored to specific applications with relatively low complexity and must be verified and validated against clinical gold standards.

This study performed computational fluid dynamics simulations of left ventricular hemodynamics of different complexity based on shape reconstruction from steady state gradient echo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. Computed flow results of a rigid wall model (RWM) and a prescribed motion fluid-structure interaction (PM-FSI) model were compared against phase-contrast MRI measurements for three healthy subjects.

Extracted boundary conditions from the steady state MRI sequences as well as computed metrics, such as flow rate, valve velocities, and kinetic energy show good agreement with in vivo flow measurements. Regional flow analysis reveals larger differences.

Basic flow structures are well captured with RWM and PM-FSI. For the computation of further biomarkers like washout or flow efficiency, usage of PM-FSI is required. Regarding boundary-near flow, more accurate anatomical models are inevitable.

These results delineate areas of application of both methods and lay a foundation for larger validation studies and sensitivity analysis for healthy and diseased cases, being an essential step upon clinical translations.