Impact of Pulmonary Venous Inflow on Cardiac Flow Simulations: Comparison with In Vivo 4D Flow MRI

Blood flow simulations are making their way into the clinic, and much attention is given to estimation of fractional flow reserve in coronary arteries. Intracardiac blood flow simulations also show promising results, and here the flow field is expected to depend on the pulmonary venous (PV) flow rates. In the absence of in vivo measurements, the distribution of the flow from the individual PVs is often unknown and typically assumed. Here, we performed intracardiac blood flow simulations based on time-resolved computed tomography on three patients, and investigated the effect of the distribution of PV flow rate on the flow field in the left atrium and ventricle. A design-of-experiment approach was used, where PV flow rates were varied in a systematic manner. In total 20 different simulations were performed per patient, and compared to in vivo 4D flow MRI measurements. Results were quantified by kinetic energy, mitral valve velocity profiles and root-mean-square errors of velocity. While large differences in atrial flow were found for varying PV inflow distributions, the effect on ventricular flow was negligible, due to a regularizing effect by mitral valve. Equal flow rate through all PVs most closely resembled in vivo measurements and is recommended in the absence of a priori knowledge.