Review on vortex dynamics in the left ventricle as an early diagnosis marker for heart diseases and its treatment outcomes

TL;DR

This review discusses how vortex dynamics in the left ventricle, analyzed through CFD simulations, can serve as early markers for heart disease diagnosis and inform treatment strategies.

Contribution

It highlights the potential of vortex pattern analysis in the LV as an early diagnostic marker for DCM and emphasizes the role of CFD tools in understanding cardiac flow dynamics.

Findings

Asymmetric vortex formation indicates healthy LV blood flow

Vortex pattern changes precede geometric alterations in LV

Vortex indexes combined with data-driven methods can aid early diagnosis

Abstract

The heart is the central part of the cardiovascular network. Its role is to pump blood to various body organs. Many cardiovascular diseases occur due to an abnormal functioning of the heart. A diseased heart leads to severe complications and in some cases death of an individual. The medical community believes that early diagnosis and treatment of heart diseases can be controlled by referring to numerical simulations of image-based heart models. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a commonly used tool for patient-specific simulations in the cardiac flows, and it can be equipped to allow a better understanding of flow patterns. In this paper, we review the progress of CFD tools to understand the flow patterns in healthy and dilated cardiomyopathic (DCM) left ventricles (LV). The formation of an asymmetric vortex in a healthy LV shows an efficient way of blood transport. The vortex pattern changes before any change in the geometry of LV is noticeable. This flow change can be used as a marker of DCM progression. We can conclude that understanding vortex dynamics in LV using various vortex indexes coupled with data-driven approaches can be used as an early diagnosis tool and improvement in DCM treatment.