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. 2010 Aug 10;43(11):2159-63.
doi: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2010.03.048. Epub 2010 May 18.

Simulation of pulmonary air flow with a subject-specific boundary condition

Youbing Yin  1 , Jiwoong Choi, Eric A Hoffman, Merryn H Tawhai, Ching-Long Lin
Affiliations

Simulation of pulmonary air flow with a subject-specific boundary condition

Youbing Yin et al. J Biomech. .

Abstract

We present a novel image-based technique to estimate a subject-specific boundary condition (BC) for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of pulmonary air flow. The information of regional ventilation for an individual is derived by registering two computed tomography (CT) lung datasets and then passed to the CT-resolved airways as the flow BC. The CFD simulations show that the proposed method predicts lobar volume changes consistent with direct image-measured metrics, whereas the other two traditional BCs (uniform velocity or uniform pressure) yield lobar volume changes and regional pressure differences inconsistent with observed physiology.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest statement

E.A. Hoffman is a founder and shareholder of VIDA Diagnostics which is commercializing some of the software utilized in this work.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
A flow chart of the entire process.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
(a) Surface geometries of the lobes (LUL: left upper lobe; LLL: left lower lobe; RUL: right upper lobe; RML: right middle lobe; and RLL: right lower lobe), CT-resolved upper and central airways for image I1; (b) combination of generated 1D centerline airway tree with the 3D CT-resolved upper airway, central airway tree and central airway skeleton.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Outlet velocity vectors (pink) and pressure contours for the three different outlet BCs: (a) proposed; (b) uniform velocity; and (c) uniform pressure. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Lobar distribution of flow rate ratio for the three cases with different outlet BCs.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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