Precise Shape Prediction of Human Heart Left Ventricle during Diastole Using Fluid-Solid Simulation

Deformation prediction of heart and especially left ventricle plays an important role in stroke volume and cardiac output determination, among other benefits of a precise and feasible simulation tool. For this purpose, numerical algorithms using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and tissue deformation computer code to capture the real shape of the left ventricle and atrium during diastole are studied and compared. The initial geometry is extracted from CT scan images of a healthy person at the beginning of diastole. The following CT images at later times of diastole are used to evaluate different method capabilities for prediction of heart deformations as well as blood flow characteristics at these instances of diastole. The current investigation is intended to study the importance of considering the real and complete geometry (left ventricle together, mitral valve and atrium) in heart modeling as well as the effect of inlet boundary condition (BC) on computational results. Furthermore, a simple case of the left ventricular hypertrophy is also studied. The effect of different boundary conditions is studied and it is shown that usage of correct BC together with addition of left atrium to the geometry of left ventricle provides more thorough results,