CFD challenge: Predicting patient-specific hemodynamics at rest and stress through an aortic coarctation

Abstract

The here presented work is part of a CFD challenge investigating the potential for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to predicted pressures and flows in an aortic coarctation during stress when conditions for the rest case are known. In our approach, we choose to couple a three element Windkessel model to the outlet boundary conditions. Good reproducibility of flow and pressures for the rest case were achieved. In the stress case, where only the inflow boundary condition was changed, baseline pressure was too high, indicating that the total resistance in the Windkessel models may need to be reduced. This would correspond to dilating the blood vessels as might be the result of a pharmacological stress test. Future work is needed to develop an optimization strategy to tune the Windkessel data for matching the clinical results. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.