Helical Flow in Healthy and Diseased Patient-specific Coronary Bifurcations

Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2022 Jul:2022:3977-3980. doi: 10.1109/EMBC48229.2022.9871374.

Abstract

Helical flow (HF) exists in healthy and diseased coronary bifurcations and was found to have a protective atherosclerotic vascular effect in other vessels. However, the role of HF in patient-specific human coronary arteries still needs further study, and is therefore the objective of this study in both healthy and diseased bifurcations. Computational studies were conducted on 16 patient-specific coronary bifurcations, including eight healthy and eight identical cases with idealized narrowing to represent disease. In general, higher HF intensity may have a favorable effect as it corelated to the reduction of the percentage vessel area exposed to adverse time averaged wall shear stress (TAWSS%) in both healthy and diseased models. The HF intensity and distribution of each model varies due to the complex shape of patient-specific models. The presence of disease appears to have an important impact on the downstream HF patterns and the TAWSS distributions. Clinical Relevance- By understanding the relationship between HF and hemodynamics, HF may be used as a predictor for the formation and progression of atherosclerotic plaque in coronary arteries instead of near-wall WSS measures, which can be determined with higher accuracy in vivo.

MeSH terms

  • Coronary Vessels / diagnostic imaging
  • Heart
  • Hemodynamics
  • Humans
  • Models, Cardiovascular*
  • Plaque, Atherosclerotic*