An Aortic Root Geometric Model, Based on Transesophageal Echocardiographic Image Sequences (TEE), for Biomechanical Simulation

Abstract

Aortic valve (AoV) stenosis is one of the most common valvular diseases. Assessing the aortic valve function could provide crucial information towards a better understanding of the disease, where numerical simulation will have an important role to play. The main scope of this work is to find an aortic root (AR) patient specific geometric model, which could be used for simulation purposes. Several models were followed to obtain an AR geometry implementing them in open source tools. Necessary parameters were obtained from 2D echo images. In order to test the obtained AR geometry, a finite element study was performed solving a fixed mesh fluid structure interaction (FSI) model. The fluid was supposed to be laminar and the tissues were modeled as St. Venant-Kirchhoff materials. Obtained results for the 1-way FSI study are compared with the published ones for structural and 2-way FSI studies showing similar results. An AR geometric reconstruction from clinic data is suited for numerical simulation.