Automatic in-vitro orifice area determination and fluttering analysis for tricuspid heart valves

Abstract

Patients suffering from a tricuspid heart valve deficiency are often treated by replacing the valve with artificial or biological implants. In case of biological implants, the use of porcine heart valves is common. To supply patients with the best such xenograft implants, quality assessment and inspection methods for biological heart valves are necessary. We describe initial approaches to automatically testing tricuspid heart valves in-vitro in an artificial circulation system. We use two criteria to judge the quality of the valve, i.e. the evolution of the orifice area during a heart cycle and the fluttering of the valve leaflets in the stream.