Noninvasive hemodynamic assessment, treatment outcome prediction and follow-up of aortic coarctation from MR imaging.

Purpose: Coarctation of the aorta (CoA) is a congenital heart disease characterized by an abnormal narrowing of the proximal descending aorta. Severity of this pathology is quantified by the blood pressure drop (△P) across the stenotic coarctation lesion. In order to evaluate the physiological significance of the preoperative coarctation and to assess the postoperative results, the hemodynamic analysis is routinely performed by measuring the △P across the coarctation site via invasive cardiac catheterization.

6DoF catheter detection, application to intracardiac echocardiography.

Hybrid imaging systems, consisting of fluoroscopy and echocardiography, are increasingly selected for intra-operative support of minimally invasive cardiac interventions. Intracardiac echocardiograpy (ICE) is an emerging modality with the promise of removing sedation or general anesthesia associated with transesophageal echocardiography (TEE). We introduce a novel 6 degrees of freedom (DoF) pose estimation approach for catheters (equipped with radiopaque ball markers) in single X-Ray fluoroscopy projection and investigate the method's application to a prototype ICE catheter.

Hemodynamic assessment of pre- and post-operative aortic coarctation from MRI.

Coarctation of the aorta (CoA), is a congenital defect characterized by a severe narrowing of the aorta, usually distal to the aortic arch. The treatment options include surgical repair, stent implantation, and balloon angioplasty. In order to evaluate the physiological significance of the pre-operative coarctation and to assess the post-operative results, the hemodynamic analysis is usually performed by measuring the pressure gradient (deltaP) across the coarctation site via invasive cardiac catheterization.

Non-invasive hemodynamic assessment of aortic coarctation: validation with in vivo measurements.

We propose a CFD-based approach for the non-invasive hemodynamic assessment of pre- and post-operative coarctation of aorta (CoA) patients. Under our approach, the pressure gradient across the coarctation is determined from computational modeling based on physiological principles, medical imaging data, and routine non-invasive clinical measurements. The main constituents of our approach are a reduced-order model for computing blood flow in patient-specific aortic geometries, a parameter estimation procedure for determining patient-specific boundary conditions and vessel wall parameters from non-invasive measurements, and a comprehensive pressure-drop formulation coupled with the overall reduced-order model.