Computational Fluid Dynamics Modelling of Blood Flow in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

Ischaemic heart disease is a reduction in coronary blood flow and the leading cause of death in the world, yet there are no methods for measuring coronary flow in routine clinical use. Recently, we invented, developed, validated and patented a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based method for measuring coronary flow called virtuQ (Wellcome Trust Fellowship: 214567/Z/18/Z; UK patent no:1813170.6, validation paper: doi:10.1093/cvr/cvaa220). virtuQ generates a reconstruction of the three-dimensional paths of the coronary arteries from the xray-based angiographic projections (left image) but data on the cross-sectional shape and its variation along the artery (which influences physiological accuracy), is strongly limited in this modality. In addition, unlike the human heart, the CFD flow analysis is steady-state, and a great deal of potentially diagnostic information is lost in this simplification. This project will address these two critical issues, one by addressing the above model limitations, and one by developing machine-learning methodologies to interpret the results of the analysis workflow. Not only will the resulting software solutions be a world first, but there is very strong industrial interest, and they are likely to be translated into real-world clinical tools.