Intra-ventricular blood flow dynamics for diagnosis and prognosis - How far are we from clinical translation?

Blood flow dynamics within the heart are known to play a major role in the quantitative assessment of cardiac function. Investigations of the intra-ventricular flow structures have identified various biomarkers with the potential to outperform conventional clinical characterizations such as the ejection fraction. A plethora of studies on the in-silico, in-vitro and in-vivo scale have emphasized the versatility of intra-ventricular flow analyses. Particularly, computational approaches have the potential to facilitate personalized cardiovascular therapies. Still, clinical translation is a major obstacle which needs to be tackled and there is a large gap between academic research and application.



Within this talk I am going to present two distinct examples of our work using computational modelling for the description of intra-ventricular flows. The first example investigates the role of inflow cannula orientation on the thrombosis risk during left ventricular assist device support. The second example focusses on the patient-specific analysis of blood flow in the heart of neonates and children with congenital heart diseases using real-time three-dimensional echocardiography.

Although the research questions are very different, similar problems including model development, implementation, and result interpretation were identified. At last, some solution approaches to these problems will be presented. The talk concludes with open questions towards a more community-based and integrated modelling of intra-ventricular flows.