Patient Specific Diagnostics for cardiovascular diseases based on diagnostic imaging: an application to the aneurism of the ascending aorta

In the framework of a collaboration between clinicians and engineers (namely, the Department of Radiology of the Brotzu Hospital in Cagliari and the group of experimental hydraulics at DICAAR - University of Cagliari), methodologies for the application of the in vitro study of the cardiovascular fluid mechanics to the support of the physical interpretation of the diagnostic imaging data are being tested. To this aim, we set up a mock-loop able to reproduce the physiologic pulsatile flow and designed to host a replica of aortic root made of transparent silicon rubber. Then, we developed a procedure to obtain a transparent and compliant replica of a patient specific ascending aorta from diagnostic images. The patient specific aorta model can be inserted in the mock-loop to study the fluid dynamics by means of particle image velocimetry techniques. We compared the flow in three cases, corresponding to physiological conditions, mild and severe aortic root dilation, observing significant differences in the redirection of the transvalvular jet and vortex evolution in the aortic flow. The observed fluid dynamics differences may have relevant implications on the thromboembolism and vascular tissue damage potential.