Flow within a whole left heart
The hemodynamics within a whole human left heart was computed by C. Chnafa (PhD student) thanks to YALES2BIO used together with the Medical Imaging-CFD framework developed within the OCFIA research program. Ten ECG gated CT images were acquired along the cardiac cycle and used to generate a 3D finite volume mesh evolving consistently with the observed geometry changes. The Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian methodology was then used to solve the Navier-Stokes equation within the computational domain which contains the four pulmonary veins, the left atrium and ventricle and the ascending aorta. The mitral and aortic valves were accounted for thanks to a simplified Immersed Boundary Method. The vorticity magnitude is displayed in the movie below. A 3mn animation describing the whole methodology is available here.
More details about this computation and subsequent analysis can be found in Chnafa et al., Comp and Fluids, 94, 2014 ; Chnafa et al., ABME, 44(11), 2016 and Assi et al., PMB, 62(17), 2017