An experimental model for pressure drop evaluation in a stenosed coronary artery

Abstract

Non-invasive measurement of pressure drop has great clinical significance for the treatment of coronary artery diseases. The objective of this study is to develop a relationship that can estimate pressure drop in a stenosed coronary artery model as a function of different parameters such as blood viscosity, artery length and diameter, flow rate and flow profile, and shape and degrees of stenosis. Experimental pressure measurements from a wide range of degrees of stenosis and critical simplified geometries of stenosis along with different unsteady flow profiles are employed to evaluate the pressure drop equation. To calculate the blockage term of the pressure drop, several experimental cases are investigated, and the results show that the blockage factor is strongly dependent on the shape and degree of stenosis. Furthermore, different unsteady flow profiles are applied to calculate the pulsatile pressure drop term, and it is found that the pulsatility parameter is not a function of the flow profile or the shape of the stenosis. However, it is only a function of the degree of stenosis. To test the validity of the developed equation, pressure drops through stenosed coronary artery models with the real physiological flow profile of the left and right coronary arteries were predicted and compared with the experimental measurements. The proposed equation is able to determine the pressure drop inside a stenosed coronary artery non-invasively using the measurement of the flow profile inside the artery as well as the images of the stenosed coronary artery obtained based on the non-invasive methods.