Key result
Varying ventricular fiber angles in human heart simulations strongly influenced mechanical function, causing wall thickening to range from 33.38% to 52.48% and ejection fraction from 46.83% to 59.95%.
Why the study?
Personalization of computational human heart models often combines patient-specific geometry with generic myofiber orientation due to a lack of accurate in vivo fiber orientation measurement techniques.
Does varying ventricular myofiber orientation affect mechanical function biomarkers in human heart simulations?
Does varying ventricular myofiber orientation affect mechanical function biomarkers in human heart simulations?
Ventricular mechanical function in computational models is highly sensitive to fiber direction, highlighting the need for personalized fiber orientation or systematic consideration of its uncertainty.
Currently, personalization of computational human heart models is often performed by combining a carefully designed patient-specific heart geometry with a generic myofiber orientation. This is due to a lack of accurate in vivo fiber orientation measurement techniques. In this study, we use a mechanical whole-heart model to evaluate the impact of ventricular fiber angles and sheet angles on clinically relevant mechanical biomarkers of the left ventricle (LV): wall thickening W T , mitral valve displacement M V D, net LV twist angle and ejection fraction EF . We show that the mechanical function is strongly dependent on the fiber direction. In the evaluated fiber angle configurations, W T ranged from 33.38 % to 52.48 %, M V D from 5.85 mm to 18.19 mm and EF from 46.83 % to 59.95 %. For some fiber angles, was negative. Additionally, was the only biomarker undergoing significant changes for different sheet angles. For W T , M V D and EF the impact of sheet angle combinations was negligible (< 4.6 %), unless changes in the active stress tensor were introduced. Even then, the change between different sheet angle combinations is small compared to the change between different stress tensor formulations. Considering the changes introduced by varying the fiber angles, developing ways of personalizing the fiber orientation or systematically considering its uncertainty appears important.
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Krauss et al. (2022) studied Computational human heart models. Ventricular myofiber orientation variation vs. Reference fiber angle setup was evaluated on Left ventricular mechanical biomarkers (wall thickening, mitral valve displacement, net LV twist angle, ejection fraction). Varying ventricular fiber angles in human heart simulations strongly influenced mechanical function, causing wall thickening to range from 33.38% to 52.48% and ejection fraction from 46.83% to 59.95%.
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