In Vitro Validation of Patient-Specific Hemodynamic Simulations in Coronary Aneurysms Caused by Kawasaki Disease

To perform experimental validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applied to patient specific coronary aneurysm anatomy of Kawasaki disease. We quantified hemodynamics in a patient-specific coronary artery aneurysm physical phantom under physiologic rest and exercise flow conditions. Using phase contrast MRI (PCMRI), we acquired 3-component flow velocity at two slice locations in the aneurysms. We then performed numerical simulations with the same geometry and inflow conditions, and performed qualitative and quantitative comparisons of velocities between experimental measurements and simulation results. We observed excellent qualitative agreement in flow pattern features. The quantitative spatially and temporally varying differences in velocity between PCMRI and CFD were proportional to the flow velocity. As a result, the percent discrepancy between simulation and experiment was relatively constant regardless of flow velocity variations. Through 1D and 2D quantitative comparisons, we found a 5–17% difference between measured and simulated velocities. Additional analysis assessed wall shear stress differences between deformable and rigid wall simulations. This study demonstrated that CFD produced good qualitative and quantitative predictions of velocities in a realistic coronary aneurysm anatomy under physiological flow conditions. The results provide insights on factors that may influence the level of agreement, and a set of in vitro experimental data that can be used by others to compare against CFD simulation results. The findings of this study increase confidence in the use of CFD for investigating hemodynamics in the specialized anatomy of coronary aneurysms. This provides a basis for future hemodynamics studies in patient-specific models of Kawasaki disease.