Patient-specific simulation of a trileaflet aortic heart valve in a realistic left ventricle and aorta

We develop a patient-specific model of the left ventricle consisting of: (1) magnetic-resonance images (MRI) data for wall geometry and kinematics reconstruction of the left ventricle during one cardiac cycle and (2) an elastic trileaflet aortic heart valve implanted in (3) a realistic aorta interacting with blood flow driven by the pulsating left ventricle. Blood flow is simulated via a new fluid-structure interaction (FSI) method, which couples the sharp-interface CURVIB [L. Ge, F. Sotiropoulos, JCP, (2007)] for handling complex moving boundaries with a new, rotation-free finite-element (FE) formulation for simulating large tissue deformations [H. Stolarski, A. Gilmanov, F. Sotiropoulos, IJNME, (2013)] The new FE shell formulation has been extensively tested and validated for a range of relevant problems showing good agreements. Validation of the coupled FSI-FE-CURVIB model is carried out for a thin plate undergoing flow-induced vibrations in the wake of a square cylinder and the computed results are in good agreement with published data. The new approach has been applied to simulate dynamic interaction of a trileaflet aortic heart valve with pulsating blood flow at physiological conditions and realistic artery and left ventricle geometry.