Boundary conditions at left ventricle wall for modelling trabeculae in blood flow simulations

Abstract: Heart disease is the main cause of death today, and studying causes and treatments are of great interest. Blood flow simulations using computational fluid dynamics shows promise in providing insight into this area. This study builds upon previous work by Larsson et al. and Kronborg et al. who have developed a program for simulating the blood flow through patient specific left ventricles. More specifically we aimed to improve the accuracy of their blood flow simulation by accounting for the protruding structure of the endocardial wall, previously disregarded in the model due to the limitations in spacial accuracy of echocardiography. These structures, consisting of trabeculae carneae and papillary muscles, have been shown to have a significant impact on the blood flow. In a recent study, Sacco et al. proposed a solution were a porous layer could mimic the effects on the blood flow from these structures in a rigid heart model. Our study aimed to apply this modification to the left ventricle of the dynamic model using the Navier-Stokes-Brinkman flow equation and a subdomain defining the porous region. This study has been working towards the end goal of fully implementing the porous layer into the heart simulation. The equations needed have been formulated and simulations have been run on flow in a more simple setting to verify the model. The simulations show promise in being able to recreate the results from Sacco et al. but further development is needed before the porous model can be tested in the dynamic left ventricle model, most notably defining the porous subdomain in the dynamic model. We conclude that the porous domain will affect the flow, possibly breaking up vortices and reducing the wall shear stress. Confirming this requires additional studies, but the implementation of a porous domain would likely result in a more accurate simulation.