A reconstruction platform for coronary arteries, finite element mesh generation and patient specific simulations

Abstract

The left coronary artery (LCA) is one of the most important sites of atherosclerotic plaque formation and its progression may lead to stroke. There are many systemic risk factors that are related to the appearance and development of atherosclerosis. It has been observed, however, that the lesions occur in specific regions of the arterial tree. Nowadays it is accepted that these regions are the ones with low abnormal values of Wall Shear Stress (WSS). The aim of this work is to generate a platform to obtain a three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction from an LCA, generate a finite element mesh and run a patient specific blood flow simulation in it. The 3D model of the LCA reconstructed was based on a computed tomography (CT) study from a healthy patient. The method used for this procedure consisted basically on three stages: (1) segmenting the LCA principal branches from TC images, (2) extracting several contours from the arteries so as to get the essence of the geometry, applying a self-developed software, and (3) using this outlines to generate a Non-uniform rotational basis spline (NURBS surface). A finite element unstructured volume mesh was generated and refined and a simulation was run on it using a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) application. The values of pressure and velocity were analyzed and WSS was computed. As expected, regions of low WSS were found in the outer walls of the bifurcation and in the inner wall of curvatures.