Left atrial hemodynamics has acquired certain interest due to its role in the pathophysiology
of thrombus formation in patients with atrial fibrillation. Computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) has proven to be a valuable tool for studying blood
flow dynamics while 4D Flow MRI is gaining importance for its ability to capture
three-dimensional flow in vivo. The objective of this study was to assess differences
in left atrial blood flow derived from in vivo flow velocities provided by a 4D
Flow MRI ...
Left atrial hemodynamics has acquired certain interest due to its role in the pathophysiology
of thrombus formation in patients with atrial fibrillation. Computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) has proven to be a valuable tool for studying blood
flow dynamics while 4D Flow MRI is gaining importance for its ability to capture
three-dimensional flow in vivo. The objective of this study was to assess differences
in left atrial blood flow derived from in vivo flow velocities provided by a 4D
Flow MRI of a real patient and CFD simulations with boundary conditions derived
from this data. In the first part of the study, a pipeline for registration and
visualization of left atrial flow from 4D Flow MRI velocity data was created. In
the second part, we performed CFD simulations using boundary conditions derived
from the 4D Flow data. The comparison of both techniques revealed some
aspects of left atrial flow that were not captured in the CFD simulations, having
made conventional assumptions about flow conditions such as laminarity, but
also manifested the capabilities of 4D Flow MRI as a tool for validation of CFD
models in the LA. This results further support that the combination of these techniques
offers advantages relevant both for research and clinical applications.
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