Pressure Change Simulation in the Heart Considering Left Ventricular Expansion and Contraction

Abstract

Aortic valve disease, one of the cardiac diseases, causes symptoms such as short breath, anginal pain, and heart failure due to valve malfunction. The aortic valve disease needs a surgery, called “aortic valvuloplasty”, which rarely causes the postoperative thrombogenesis and requires no medication. The surgery, however, is very difficult and requires preoperative planning and simulations. In this paper, we propose a particle based simulation using a model generated from X-ray CT data. In the simulation, blood flow from the left ventricle to the aorta is visualized, and the pressure changes in the aorta and the left ventricle are compared with those in the real data. After the left ventricle contracts, the aortic valve opens, the blood flows from the left ventricle to the aorta, and the left ventricular pressure increases. As the blood is ejected from the left ventricle to the aorta, the aortic pressure rises. Then, as the left ventricle relaxes, the left ventricular pressure decreases below the aortic pressure, and the aortic valve closes. As the result of the simulation considering the interplay between the left ventricle’s contraction and relaxation, and the valve’s opening and closing, we have confirmed that the pressure changes in the aorta and the left ventricle have become very similar to the real data.