Quantifying particle residence time and blood damage using time-resolved 3D particle tracking

Quantifying particle residence time and blood damage is essential in developing prosthetic heart valves and other blood-contacting medical devices. Given the high cost of the in vitro blood loop experiments, past studies have mainly relied on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with hemolysis models for such tasks. However, CFD simulation is challenging to perform when resolving the complex fluid-structure-interaction problem is required. In this study, a method to quantify blood damage experimentally using 3D time-resolved particle tracking is developed, and the results are compared with CFD simulations. Experiments are performed in a fully refractive index-matched setup, and particle tracks are obtained using the shake-the-box algorithm. Direct quantifications of the particle residence time and blood damage only become possible after reconnecting the broken tracks with an extension algorithm that extrapolates the particle path forward and backward in time. The blood damage of an individual particle is calculated by a numerical hemolysis model based on the shear stress and exposure time. Preliminary results show that 3D particle tracking can be a very useful and accurate tool to quantify blood damage, especially when CFD simulation is difficult to perform.