A finite element framework for high performance computer simulation of blood flow in the left ventricle of the human heart

• Progress in medical imaging, computational fluid dynamics and high performance computing (HPC) enables computer simulations to emerge as a significant tool to enhance our understanding of the relationship between cardiac diseases and hemodynamics. The field of cardiac modelling is diverse, covering different aspects on microscopic and macroscopic level. In our research, we develop a cardiac model which is embedded in a computational environment where specific properties of the heart such as fluid-structure interaction of the aortic valve can be modeled, or numerical and computational algorithms as parallel computing or adaptivity can be added in a modular way without extensive efforts. In this paper, we present a patient-specific Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) finite element framework for simulating the blood flow in the left ventricle of a human heart using HPC, which forms the core of our cardiac model. The mathematical model is described together with the discretization method, mesh smoothing algorithms, and the parallel implementation in Unicorn which is part of the open source software framework FEniCS-HPC. The parallel performance is demonstrated, a convergence study is conducted and intraventricular flow patterns are visualized. The results capture essential features observed with other computational models and imaging techniques, and thus indicate that our framework possesses the potential to provide relevant clinical information for diagnosis and medical treatment. Several studies have been conducted to simulate the three dimensional blood flow in the left ventricle of the human heart with prescribed wall movement. Our contribution to the field of cardiac research lies in establishing an open source framework modular both in modelling and numerical algorithms.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Matematik -- Beräkningsmatematik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Mathematics -- Computational Mathematics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Finite element method

Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian method

parallel algorithm

blood flow

left ventricle

patient-specific heart model

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

rap (ämneskategori)