Volumetric flow rate reconstructionin great vessels

Abstract

We present a new algorithm to reconstruct the volumetric flux in the aorta. We study a simple 1D blood flow model without viscosity term and sophisticated material model. Using the continuity law, we could reduce the original inverse problem related to a system of PDEs to a parameter iden-tification problem involving a Riccati-type ODE with periodic coefficients. We implemented a block-based optimization algorithm to recover the model parameters. We tested our method on real data obtained using CG-gated CT angiography imaging of the aorta. Local flow rate was calculated in 10 cm long aorta segments which are located 1 cm below the heart. The reconstructed volumetric flux shows a realistic wave-like behavior, where reflections from arteria iliaca can also be observed. Our approach is suitable for estimating the main characteristics of pulsatile flow in the aorta and thereby contributing to a more accurate description of several cardiovascular lesions.