Torsional motion of the left ventricle does not affect ventricular fluid dynamics of both foetal and adult hearts.

Left ventricular torsion is caused by shortening and relaxation of the helical fibres in the myocardium, and is thought to be an optimal configuration for minimizing myocardial tissue strains. Characteristics of torsional motion has also been proposed to be markers for cardiac dysfunction. However, its effects on fluid and energy dynamics in the left ventricle have not been comprehensively investigated. To investigate this, we performed image-based flow simulations on five healthy adult porcine and two healthy human foetal left ventricles (representing two different length scales) at different degrees of torsional motions. In the adult porcine ventricles, cardiac features such as papillary muscles and mitral valves, and cardiac conditions such as myocardial infarctions, were also included to investigate the effect of twist. The results showed that, for all conditions investigated, ventricular torsional motion caused minimal changes to flow patterns, and consistently accounted for less than 2% of the energy losses, wall shear stresses, and ejection momentum energy. In contrast, physiological characteristics such as chamber size, stroke volume and heart rate had a much greater influence on flow patterns and energy dynamics. The results thus suggested that it might not be necessary to model the torsional motion to study the flow and energy dynamics in left ventricles.

Role of diastolic vortices in flow and energy dynamics during systolic ejection.

MRI-based computational fluid dynamics simulations were performed in the left ventricles of two adult porcine subjects with varying physiological states (before and after an induced infarction). The hypothesis that diastolic vortices store kinetic energy and assist systolic ejection was tested, by performing systolic simulations in the presence and absence of diastolic vortices. The latter was achieved by reinitializing the entire velocity field to be zero at the beginning of systole. A rudimentary prescribed motion model of a mitral valve was included in the simulations to direct the incoming mitral jet towards the apex. Results showed that the presence or absence of diastolic vortex rings had insignificant impact on the energy expended by walls of the left ventricles for systolic ejection for both the porcine subjects, under all physiological conditions. Although substantial kinetic energy was stored in diastolic vortices by end diastole, it provided no appreciable savings during systolic ejection, and most likely continued to complete dissipation during systole. The role of diastolic vortices in apical washout was investigated by studying the cumulative mass fraction of passive dye that was ejected during systole in the presence and absence of vortices. Results indicated that the diastolic vortices play a crucial role in ensuring efficient washout of apical blood during systolic ejection.

Flow dynamics and energy efficiency of flow in the left ventricle during myocardial infarction.

Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death worldwide, where myocardial infarction (MI) is a major category. After infarction, the heart has difficulty providing sufficient energy for circulation, and thus, understanding the heart's energy efficiency is important. We induced MI in a porcine animal model via circumflex ligation and acquired multiple-slice cine magnetic resonance (MR) images in a longitudinal manner-before infarction, and 1 week (acute) and 4 weeks (chronic) after infarction. Computational fluid dynamic simulations were performed based on MR images to obtain detailed fluid dynamics and energy dynamics of the left ventricles. Results showed that energy efficiency flow through the heart decreased at the acute time point. Since the heart was observed to experience changes in heart rate, stroke volume and chamber size over the two post-infarction time points, simulations were performed to test the effect of each of the three parameters. Increasing heart rate and stroke volume were found to significantly decrease flow energy efficiency, but the effect of chamber size was inconsistent. Strong complex interplay was observed between the three parameters, necessitating the use of non-dimensional parameterization to characterize flow energy efficiency. The ratio of Reynolds to Strouhal number, which is a form of Womersley number, was found to be the most effective non-dimensional parameter to represent energy efficiency of flow in the heart. We believe that this non-dimensional number can be computed for clinical cases via ultrasound and hypothesize that it can serve as a biomarker for clinical evaluations.

Hydrodynamic and dispersion behavior in a non-porous silica monolith through fluid dynamic study of a computational mimic reconstructed from sub-micro-tomographic scans.

An analysis of the transport properties of the bulk homogeneous core of a commercially available silica monolith (Chromolith(®)) is presented via direct numerical simulations in a topological model reconstructed from 3D nanotomographic scans at isotropic resolutions of 390 nm, 290 nm and 190 nm. The pore and skeleton size distributions were calculated from image analysis and a representative unit cell from each resolution was reconstructed to simulate the hydrodynamic transport properties using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). A 30 µm × 30 µm × 30 µm unit cell extracted at 190 nm resolution was found to be representative of hydrodynamic permeability. Numerical peak parking simulations yielded an axial external obstruction factor (γ(e)) of 0.8. Mass transfer characteristics of a large non-penetrating molecule (BSA) were evaluated under non-retained conditions so as to elucidate the eddy dispersion contribution to total HETP. Transverse and axial dispersion length scales in the reconstructed model were resolved and related to the structural heterogeneities in the silica monolith. Deviations of simulated HETP from experimental measurements were attributed to a transcolumn dispersion contribution, which amounted to about 90% of the total HETP. The presented approach provides great scope to analyze the contributions of pore network topology to separation performance of silica monoliths (and other porous media) in HPLC applications. A significant reduction in simulation time and memory resources has been observed due to the lower scanning resolution, without significant loss in prediction accuracy.

Response to "comments on 'Hydrodynamic and dispersion behavior in a non-porous silica monolith through fluid dynamic study of a computational mimic reconstructed from sub-micro-tomographic scans"'.

We respond to the comments made by Hlushkou et al. (2013) [1] (JCA-13-207) to our earlier work [J. Chromatogr. A 1274 (2013) 65], wherein the authors have questioned the validity of our reconstruction of the bulk macropore space in a silica monolith and challenged the interpretations from subsequent computational fluid dynamic simulations. We provide an explanation as to why a monotonic trend in external porosity values cannot be expected with decreasing scanning resolutions. The observed deviations of the pore and skeleton size distributions from those in literature are explained based on the differences in methods used to calculate these distributions. The difference in the scaled axial velocity frequency distributions is explained based on the assumptions made and the distributions are redrawn to reflect the said assumptions. The normalized transient diffusion (peak parking) and dispersion simulations are repeated with a higher resolution of detection planes to measure the variance of spreading pulse, thereby providing an explanation for the anomalies pointed out in our earlier work. Finally, we explain our comparison of the computational expenses with previous work as a study of the trade-off in accuracy that results from the lower resolution scan and use of commercial CFD packages.