Atrioventricular Delay Optimization in Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy Assessed by a Computer Model

A lumped-parameter model of the cardiovascular system is applied in this work to the analysis of the characteristics of mitral flow profiles, for different atrio-ventricular pacing configurations, in the context of cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). Primarily, a sensitivity analysis is performed on the main model parameters, so as to discern their influence on mitral flow. Parameter identification is then applied to reproduce pulsed-wave Doppler profiles of the mitral inflow acquired from three patients during postoperative CRT optimization sessions. The model is able to reproduce patient-specific morphological variations on mitral inflow profiles for different AVD values, providing relative mean squared errors reading 0.031, 0.068 and 0.076 for the three patients.