Abstract
The left atrial appendage (LAA) is a complex and heterogeneous bulge structure of the left atrium (LA). It is known that, in atrial fibrillation (AF) patients, around 70% to 90% of the thrombi are formed there. However, the exact mechanism of the process of thrombus formation and the role of the LAA in that process are not fully understood yet. The main goal of this work is to perform patient-specific haemodynamics simulations of the LA and LAA and jointly analyse the resulting blood flow parameters with morphological descriptors of these structures in relation with the risk of thrombus formation. Some LAA morphological descriptors such as ostium characteristics and pulmonary configuration were found to influence LAA blood flow patterns. These findings improve our knowledge on the required conditions for thrombus formation in the LAA.
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Acknowledgments
This work was partially supported by COMPILAAO Retos I+D project (DPI2015-71640-R), funded by the Spanish Government of Economy and Competitiveness.
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Mill, J. et al. (2019). Joint Analysis of Personalized In-Silico Haemodynamics and Shape Descriptors of the Left Atrial Appendage. In: Pop, M., et al. Statistical Atlases and Computational Models of the Heart. Atrial Segmentation and LV Quantification Challenges. STACOM 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11395. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12029-0_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12029-0_7
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