Effect of Wall Motion Sampling on CFD-Derived Left Atrial Flow Metrics.
9 affiliations
- 1Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria.
- 2Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, Spain.
- 3Departamento de Ingeniería Mecánica, Térmica y de Fluidos, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain.
- 4Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
- 5Gottfried Schatz Research Center, Division of Biophysics, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
- 6Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
- 7Division of Cardiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
- 8Department of Aerospace Engineering, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
- 9Center for Cardiovascular Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
Abstract
The temporal resolution of medical imaging sequences used to drive patient-specific computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations remains limited, typically providing 10-20 frames per cardiac cycle. Therefore, temporal interpolation to reconstruct left atrial (LA) wall motion and boundary conditions is required, but its impact on hemodynamic predictions has not been systematically characterized. To investigate this, we constructed high-temporal-resolution reference wall-motion data using electromechanical (EM) simulations on five patient-specific atrial geometries with a history of atrial fibrillation. We then generated temporally downsampled datasets to emulate clinical frame rates (5, 10, 20, and 40 frames per cycle) and performed CFD simulations to isolate the effects of temporal undersampling on hemodynamic metrics. The focus was placed on kinetic energy, KE, and residence time, TR , particularly in the left atrial appendage (LAA), where thrombosis is most likely to occur. We employed an immersed boundary method to prescribe the wall motion and computed blood TR through a passive scalar transport equation. Results indicate that while global LA hemodynamic indices were marginally affected by the frame rate (errors <9% ), LAA metrics were more sensitive with errors up to 31% compared to reference values. The results based on 20 and 40 frames per cycle yielded favorable agreement with reference results, while 5- and 10-frame reconstructions showed larger, though not systematically biased, deviations from the reference. Importantly, patient ranking by blood-stasis indices was largely preserved. The analysis suggests that patient-specific LA reconstructions derived from dynamic CT imaging provide a reliable basis for estimating LAA blood-stasis indices. Higher frame rates ( ≥20 per cycle) offer improved quantitative accuracy, while lower temporal resolutions may remain informative for patient stratification purposes, where relative ranking is more relevant than absolute accuracy.
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BibTeX
@article{stocker2026effect,
title = {{Effect of Wall Motion Sampling on CFD-Derived Left Atrial Flow Metrics.}},
author = {Yvonne Stöcker and Manuel Guerrero-Hurtado and Eduardo Durán and Alejandro Gonzalo and Zorica Ristić and Åshild Telle and Ahmad Kassar and Romanos Haykal and Nazem Akoum and Patrick M Boyle and Oscar Flores and Christoph M Augustin and Juan Carlos Del Alamo and Manuel García-Villalba},
journal = {International journal for numerical methods in biomedical engineering},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.1002/cnm.70230},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42973057},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Effect of Wall Motion Sampling on CFD-Derived Left Atrial Flow Metrics.
AU - Yvonne Stöcker
AU - Manuel Guerrero-Hurtado
AU - Eduardo Durán
AU - Alejandro Gonzalo
AU - Zorica Ristić
AU - Åshild Telle
AU - Ahmad Kassar
AU - Romanos Haykal
AU - Nazem Akoum
AU - Patrick M Boyle
AU - Oscar Flores
AU - Christoph M Augustin
AU - Juan Carlos Del Alamo
AU - Manuel García-Villalba
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/01
JO - International journal for numerical methods in biomedical engineering
DO - 10.1002/cnm.70230
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42973057
AB - The temporal resolution of medical imaging sequences used to drive patient-specific computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations remains limited, typically providing 10-20 frames per cardiac cycle. Therefore, temporal interpolation to reconstruct left atrial (LA) wall motion and boundary conditions is required, but its impact on hemodynamic predictions has not been systematically characterized. To investigate this, we constructed high-temporal-resolution reference wall-motion data using electromechanical (EM) simulations on five patient-specific atrial geometries with a history of atrial fibrillation. We then generated temporally downsampled datasets to emulate clinical frame rates (5, 10, 20, and 40 frames per cycle) and performed CFD simulations to isolate the effects of temporal undersampling on hemodynamic metrics. The focus was placed on kinetic energy, KE, and residence time, TR , particularly in the left atrial appendage (LAA), where thrombosis is most likely to occur. We employed an immersed boundary method to prescribe the wall motion and computed blood TR through a passive scalar transport equation. Results indicate that while global LA hemodynamic indices were marginally affected by the frame rate (errors <9% ), LAA metrics were more sensitive with errors up to 31% compared to reference values. The results based on 20 and 40 frames per cycle yielded favorable agreement with reference results, while 5- and 10-frame reconstructions showed larger, though not systematically biased, deviations from the reference. Importantly, patient ranking by blood-stasis indices was largely preserved. The analysis suggests that patient-specific LA reconstructions derived from dynamic CT imaging provide a reliable basis for estimating LAA blood-stasis indices. Higher frame rates ( ≥20 per cycle) offer improved quantitative accuracy, while lower temporal resolutions may remain informative for patient stratification purposes, where relative ranking is more relevant than absolute accuracy.
SN - 2040-7939
SN - 2040-7947
ER -