1. A Patient-Specific CFD Pipeline Using Doppler Echocardiography for Application in Coarctation of the Aorta in a Limited Resource Clinical Context
- Author
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Alistair Revell, Amir Keshmiri, Thomas Aldersley, Bernard Keavney, Liam Swanson, Mark E Engel, Paul Human, Barend Fourie, Malebogo Ngoepe, John Lawrenson, Liesl Zühlke, Benjamin Owen, Amin Deyranlou, George Comitis, and Rik De Decker
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Histology ,Heart disease ,lcsh:Biotechnology ,Biomedical Engineering ,Coarctation of the aorta ,Bioengineering ,Context (language use) ,computational fluid dynamics ,02 engineering and technology ,Doppler echocardiography ,03 medical and health sciences ,patient-specific ,lcsh:TP248.13-248.65 ,medicine ,Intensive care medicine ,Original Research ,medicine.diagnostic_test ,business.industry ,Bioengineering and Biotechnology ,Patient specific ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,medicine.disease ,congenital heart disease ,Pipeline (software) ,030104 developmental biology ,Angiography ,coarctation of the aorta ,0210 nano-technology ,business ,Limited resources ,Biotechnology - Abstract
Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common birth defect globally and coarctation of the aorta (CoA) is one of the commoner CHD conditions, affecting around 1/1800 live births. CoA is considered a CHD of critical severity. Unfortunately, the prognosis for a child born in a low and lower-middle income country (LLMICs) with CoA is far worse than in a high-income country. Reduced diagnostic and interventional capacities of specialists in these regions lead to delayed diagnosis and treatment, which in turn lead to more cases presenting at an advanced stage. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an important tool in this context since it can provide additional diagnostic data in the form of hemodynamic parameters. It also provides an in silico framework, both to test potential procedures and to assess the risk of further complications arising post-repair. Although this concept is already in practice in high income countries, the clinical infrastructure in LLMICs can be sparse, and access to advanced imaging modalities such as phase contrast magnetic resonance imaging (PC-MRI) is limited, if not impossible. In this study, a pipeline was developed in conjunction with clinicians at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, Cape Town and was applied to perform a patient-specific CFD study of CoA. The pipeline uses data acquired from CT angiography and Doppler transthoracic echocardiography (both much more clinically available than MRI in LLMICs), while segmentation is conducted via SimVascular and simulation is realized using OpenFOAM. The reduction in cost through use of open-source software and the use of broadly available imaging modalities makes the methodology clinically feasible and repeatable within resource-constrained environments. The project identifies the key role of Doppler echocardiography, despite its disadvantages, as an intrinsic component of the pipeline if it is to be used routinely in LLMICs.
- Published
- 2020
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