Integrating Uncertainty Quantification into Computational Fluid Dynamics Models of Coronary Arteries Under Steady Flow

TL;DR

This study integrates uncertainty quantification into CFD models of coronary arteries to assess how input variability affects wall shear stress, improving model credibility for clinical use.

Contribution

Introduced an uncertainty quantification framework using polynomial chaos expansion in CFD models of coronary arteries, highlighting dominant input influences on wall shear stress.

Findings

Velocity dominates WSS variability in analytical model (~79%)

Viscosity dominates WSS variability in patient-specific model (~59%)

Unary input interactions are most significant (~93-99%)

Abstract

Computational models are continuously integrated in the clinical space, where they support clinicians in disease diagnosis, prognosis, and prevention strategies. While assisting in clinical space, these computational models frequently use deterministic approaches, where the inherent (aleatoric) variability of input parameters is ignored. This questions the credibility and often hinders the clinical adoption of these computational models. Therefore, in this study, we introduced uncertainty quantification in the computational fluid dynamics models of the left main coronary artery to analyze the influence of input hemodynamics parameters on wall shear stress (WSS). UncertainSCI was used, where an emulator was built using polynomial chaos expansion between the input parameters and the output quantity of interest, and the output sensitivities and statistics were directly extracted from the emulator. The uncertainty-informed framework was first applied to an analytical solution of the Navier-Stokes equation (Poiseuille flow) and then to a patient-specific model of the left main coronary artery. Different input hemodynamics parameters are considered, such as pressure, viscosity, density, velocity, and radius, whereas wall shear stress was considered as our output quantity of interest. The results suggest that velocity dominated the variability in WSS in the analytical model (~79%), whereas viscosity dominated in the patient-specific model (~59%). The results further suggest that out of all the Sobol indices interactions, unary interactions were the most dominant ones, contributing ~93.2% and ~99% for the analytical and patient-specific model, respectively. This study will enhance confidence in computational models, facilitating their adoption in the clinical space to improve decision-making for coronary artery disease diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic strategies.