Computational Hemodynamics-Based Growth Prediction for Small Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms: Laminar Simulations Versus Large Eddy Simulations

Abstract

Prior studies have shown that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations help assess patient-specific hemodynamics in abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs); patient-specific hemodynamic stressors are frequently used to predict an AAA’s growth. Previous studies have utilized both laminar and turbulent simulation models to simulate hemodynamics. However, the impact of different CFD simulation models on the predictive modeling of AAA growth remains unknown and is thus the knowledge gap that motivates this study. Specifically, CFD simulations were performed for 70 AAA models derived from 70 patients’ computed tomography angiography (CTA) data with known growth status (i.e., fast-growing [> 5 mm/yr] or slowly growing [< 5 mm/yr]). We used laminar and large eddy simulation (LES) models to obtain hemodynamic parameters to predict AAAs’ growth status. Predicting the growth status of AAAs was based on morphological, hemodynamic, and patient health parameters in conjunction with three classical machine learning (ML) classifiers, namely, support vector machine (SVM), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), and generalized linear model (GLM). Our preliminary results estimated aneurysmal flow stability and wall shear stress (WSS) were comparable in both laminar and LES flow simulations. Moreover, computed WSS and velocity-related hemodynamic variables obtained from the laminar and LES simulations showed comparable abilities in differentiating the growth status of AAAs. More importantly, the predictive modeling performance of the three ML classifiers mentioned above was similar, with less than a 2% difference observed (p-value > 0.05). In closing, our findings suggest that two different flow simulations investigated did not significantly affect outcomes of computational hemodynamics and predictive modeling of AAAs’ growth status, given the data investigated.