Coronary Artery WSS Profiling Using a Geometry Reconstruction Based on Biplane Angiography

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods based on three-dimensional (3D) vessel reconstructions have recently been shown to provide prognostically relevant hemodynamic data. However, the geometry reconstruction and the assessment of clinically relevant hemodynamic parameters may depend on the used imaging modality. In this study, the silicon model of the left coronary artery (LCA) was acquired with a biplane angiography. The geometry reconstruction was done using commercial CAAS 5.2 QCA 3D software and compared with an original geometry. The original model is an optically digitized post-mortem vessel cast. The biplane angiography reconstruction achieved a Hausdorff surface distance of 0.236 mm to the original geometry that is comparable with results obtained in our earlier study for computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reconstructions. Steady flow simulations were performed with a commercial CFD program FLUENT. A comparison of the calculated wall shear stress (WSS) shows good correlation for histograms (r = 0.97) and good agreement among the four modalities with a mean WSS of 0.65 Pa in the original model, of 0.68 Pa in the CT-based model, of 0.67 Pa in the MRI based model, and of 0.69 Pa in the biplane angiography-based model. We can conclude that the biplane angiography-based reconstructions can be used for the WSS profiling of the coronary arteries.