Applying vessel inlet/outlet conditions to patient-specific models embedded in Cartesian grids

Cardiovascular modeling has the capability to provide valuable information allowing clinicians to better classify patients and aid in surgical planning. Modeling is advantageous for being non-invasive, and also allows for quantification of values not easily obtained from physical measurements. Hemodynamics are heavily dependent on vessel geometry, which varies greatly from patient to patient. For this reason, clinically relevant approaches must perform these simulations on patient-specific geometry. Geometry is acquired from various imaging modalities, including magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, and ultrasound. The typical approach for generating a computational model requires construction of a triangulated surface mesh for use with finite volume or finite element solvers. Surface mesh construction can result in a loss of anatomical features and often requires a skilled user to execute manual steps in 3rd party software. An alternative to this method is to use a Cartesian grid solver to conduct the fluid simulation. Cartesian grid solvers do not require a surface mesh. They can use the implicit geometry representation created during the image segmentation process, but they are constrained to a cuboidal domain. Since patient-specific geometry usually deviate from the orthogonal directions of a cuboidal domain, flow extensions are often implemented. Flow extensions are created via a skilled user and 3rd party software, rendering the Cartesian grid solver approach no more clinically useful than the triangulated surface mesh approach. This work presents an alternative to flow extensions by developing a method of applying vessel inlet and outlet boundary conditions to regions inside the Cartesian domain.