Noninvasive pulmonary arterial pressure measurement based on acceleration-encoding 4D flow MRI and Navier-Stokes equations

Motivation: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is diagnosed as mean pulmonary arterial pressure (mPAP) greater than 20 mmHg by right heart catheterization (RHC). RHC is invasive, leading to delay in the diagnosis of PH. Goal(s): To address this issue, we propose a novel method to noninvasively measure the mPAP based on an acceleration-encoding 4D flow MRI technique and Navier-Stokes equations. Approach: The feasibility of the proposed method was tested and validated in a customized flow phantom, including 10 health volunteers and 2 suspected PH patients. Results: Preliminary results indicate that the proposed method has great potential for noninvasively measuring the mPAP for the diagnosis of PH. Impact: The proposed noninvasive method can be used to measure mPAP, enabling earlier diagnosis of PH. This advancement will prompt further research into noninvasive assessments of other cardiovascular conditions which require hemodynamic measurements.