Clinical value of portal venous pressure based on three dimensional reconstruction model of portal vein combined with finite element analysis in patients with portal hypertension

Objective To study the clinical value of three-dimensional CT reconstruction model of portal venous system combined with finite element analysis to measure portal venous pressure in patients with portal hypertension. Methods A retrospective study was conducted on 27 patients who were diagnosed to have portal hypertension at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University from May 2016 to May 2018. There were 17 males and 10 females, with ages ranging from 34 to 77 years (mean 56 years). All these patients underwent transjugular intrahepatic portal venous shunt (TIPS) during which the portal venous pressure was measured. The imaging data was imported into the three-dimensional software of medical imaging to reconstruct the three dimensional model of portal vein, and the finite element analysis software of ANSYS was used to calculate the portal venous pressure by calculation with given boundary conditions. Pearson correlation was used to analyze the correlation between the actual measurement of portal venous pressure and the predicted value. Results The actual measured value of portal vein pressure before TIPS in 27 patients with portal hypertension was (3 783±930) Pa, and the predicted value was (4 238±1 218) Pa. There was no significant difference (P>0.05). The predicted value of portal venous pressure was positively correlated with the actual measured value (r=0.402, 95%CI: 0.026-0.678, P<0.05). Conclusion Non-invasive measurement of portal venous pressure based on three-dimensional portal venous reconstruction combined with finite element analysis correlated with actual portal venous pressure in patients with portal hypertension. Key words: Hypertension, portal; Imaging, three-dimensional; Multislice spiral computerized tomography; Correlation