Abstract
We study the formation of the mitral vortex ring during early diastolic filling in a patient-specific left ventricle using direct numerical simulation. The geometry of the left ventricle is reconstructed from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The heart wall motion is modeled by a cell-based activation methodology, which yields physiologic kinematics with heart rate equal to 52 beats per minute. We show that the structure of the mitral vortex ring consists of the main vortex ring and trailing vortex tubes, which originate at the heart wall. The trailing vortex tubes play an important role in exciting twisting circumferential instability modes of the mitral vortex ring. At the end of diastole, the vortex ring impinges on the wall and the intraventricular flow transitions to a weak turbulent state. Our results can be used to help interpret and analyze three-dimensional in-vivo flow measurements obtained with MRI.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 20-24 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | European Journal of Mechanics, B/Fluids |
| Volume | 35 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2012 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by NIH Grant RO1-HL-07262 and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. We thank Ajit Yoganathan and the members of the Georgia Tech Cardiovascular Fluid Mechanics Laboratory for providing us with the anatomic LV geometry used in this study. The first author is partially supported by a fellowship from the Vietnam Education Foundation.
Keywords
- Intraventricular flow
- Patient-specific modeling
- Vortex ring