Patient-specific morphological and blood flow analysis of pulmonary artery in the case of severe deformations of the lung due to pneumothorax
Résumé
Pneumothorax is a pulmonary disease that leads to a lung's collapse. Its effect on hemodynamics, especially on pulmonary arteries blood flow, remains unclear. In this study, a patient-specific study is held to provide quantitative and qualitative informations about effects of pulmonary deformation on blood flow. From three patients' CT images, arterial geometries are extracted up to the 4th generation and compared for recovered and sick conditions. Different values such as cross-sectional aspect ratio and cross-sections' area or angle between branches are calculated. We show that pulmonary artery shape is strongly affected by pulmonary disorders in the main trunk and the 2nd generation branches. In order to clarify the effect of geometrical changes on blood flow, we performed computational simulation in extracted geometries up to the 4th generation for one patient. We solved steady laminar flow of Newtonian fluid and assumed constant flow rate at the inlet. We found change in the flow structure between recovered and sick conditions, which results in change of flow rate ratio between right and left lung. Those results point out that pneumothorax has considerable effects on the pulmonary arteries morphology and pulmonary blood flow. This study shows, for the first time from a patient-specific numerical study, how pneumothorax can affect hemodynamics in pulmonary arteries.