Numerical modeling of hemodynamics scenarios of patient-specific coronary artery bypass grafts

Abstract

A fast computational framework is devised to the study of several configurations of patient-specific coronary artery bypass grafts. This is especially useful to perform a sensitivity analysis of the hemodynamics for different flow conditions occurring in native coronary arteries and bypass grafts, the investigation of the progression of the coronary artery disease and the choice of the most appropriate surgical procedure. A complete pipeline, from the acquisition of patient-specific medical images to fast parameterized computational simulations, is proposed. Complex surgical configurations employed in the clinical practice, such as Y-grafts and sequential grafts, are studied. A virtual surgery platform based on model reduction of unsteady Navier-Stokes equations for blood dynamics is proposed to carry out sensitivity analyses in a very rapid and reliable way. A specialized geometrical parameterization is employed to compare the effect of stenosis and anastomosis variation on the outcome of the surgery in several relevant cases.

Keywords: Cardiovascular simulations; Computational reduction strategies; Coronary bypass grafts; Data assimilation; Geometrical parameterization; Patient-specific computing.