Patient-specific modelling of whole heart anatomy, dynamics and haemodynamics from four-dimensional cardiac CT images

Abstract

There is a growing need for patient-specific and holistic modelling of the heart to support comprehensive disease assessment and intervention planning as well as prediction of therapeutic outcomes. We propose a patient-specific model of the whole human heart, which integrates morphology, dynamics and haemodynamic parameters at the organ level. The modelled cardiac structures are robustly estimated from four-dimensional cardiac computed tomography (CT), including all four chambers and valves as well as the ascending aorta and pulmonary artery. The patient-specific geometry serves as an input to a three-dimensional Navier–Stokes solver that derives realistic haemodynamics, constrained by the local anatomy, along the entire heart cycle. We evaluated our framework with various heart pathologies and the results correlate with relevant literature reports.