pELAFINT3D: A Unified Approach for Modeling Prosthetic Heart Valves

Cutting edge computational tools are an important component of the future of tasks such as surgical planning of mitral valve repair and the design and evaluation of prosthetic valves. For example, despite half a century of use, mechanical heart valves still require further research to reduce the non-physiologic nature of the flow field, which is the source of potential medical complications, of which the most serious complication is thrombus formation [1]. In fact, there is still a lack of consensus in the literature about which flow pathologies are the most damaging to blood elements [2, 3]. Much computational work has been performed examining the flow around mechanical heart valve devices [4, 5], but because the emphasis has been on correct valve motion and not fine structure detail, only the largest features have been adequately resolved and the forward flow structures are allowed to dissipate on stretched meshes such that the features may not lead to the correct fine structure state as directionality of blood flow changes during the cardiac cycle.