Key result
The anatomical length of persistence of large-scale coherent motion was 29.6% of the healthy thoracic aorta length, driven primarily by ascending aorta blood flow rate rather than geometry.
Why the study?
Distilling aortic flow complexity into clinical quantities causes information loss regarding 4D aortic fluid structures, prompting a network-based approach to characterize large-scale coherent motion in vivo.
Cross-Sectional (n=41)
No
A novel network-based approach applied to 4D flow MRI quantitatively characterizes large-scale coherent blood motion in the healthy aorta, establishing reference values for future disease assessment.
Establishes healthy aortic flow coherence reference; leaves open disease applications pending validation.
OBJECTIVE: The need for distilling the hemodynamic complexity of aortic flows into clinically relevant quantities resulted in a loss of the information hidden in 4D aortic fluid structures. To reduce information loss, this study proposes a network-based approach to identify and characterize in vivo the large-scale coherent motion of blood in the healthy human aorta. METHODS: The quantitative paradigm of the aortic flow as a "social network" was applied on 4D flow MRI acquisitions performed on forty-one healthy volunteers. Correlations between the aortic blood flow rate waveform at the proximal ascending aorta (AAo), assumed as one of the drivers of aortic hemodynamics, and the waveforms of the axial velocity in the whole aorta were used to build "one-to-all" networks. The impact of the driving flow rate waveform and of aortic geometric attributes on the transport of large-scale coherent fluid structures was investigated. RESULTS: The anatomical length of persistence of large-scale coherent motion was the 29.6% of the healthy thoracic aorta length (median value, IQR 23.1%-33.9%). Such length is significantly influenced by the average and peak-to-peak AAo blood flow rate values, suggesting a remarkable inertial effect of the AAo flow rate on the transport of large-scale fluid structures in the distal aorta. Aortic geometric attributes such as curvature, torsion and arch shape did not influence the anatomical length of persistence. CONCLUSION: The proposed in vivo approach allowed to quantitatively characterize the transport of large-scale fluid structures in the healthy aorta, strengthening the definition of coherent hemodynamic structures and identifying flow inertia rather than geometry as one of its main determinants. SIGNIFICANCE: The findings on healthy aortas may be used as reference values to investigate the impact of aortic disease or implanted devices in disrupting/restoring the physiological spatiotemporal coherence of large-scale aortic flow.
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Calò et al. (2022) conducted a cross-sectional in Healthy human aorta (n=41). Ascending aorta blood flow rate was evaluated on Anatomical length of persistence of large-scale coherent motion (percentage of thoracic aorta length). The anatomical length of persistence of large-scale coherent motion was 29.6% of the healthy thoracic aorta length, driven primarily by ascending aorta blood flow rate rather than geometry.
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