Practical patient-specific cardiac blood flow simulations using SPH

Abstract

While recent developments in the field of ventricular blood flow simulations have pushed modeling to increasingly high levels of accuracy, there has been a steep cost in computation time. Current state-of-the-art simulators take days to run, which is impractical for use in a clinical setting. In this paper, we describe novel adaptations of the SPH algorithm to this problem to achieve an order of magnitude faster performance, while maintaining accuracy in the flow. By constructing appropriate boundary particles and wall motion and adding a fast collision detection component to an existing SPH architecture, our system is able to simulate a cardiac cycle in as little as 30 minutes. This breakthrough will, in the near future, allow the useful simulation of blood flow and its related characterization for clinically useful applications.