Relative Residence Time Can Account for Half of the Anatomical Variation in Fatty Streak Prevalence Within the Right Coronary Artery

Figures

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  Fig. 1. Variation in inlet velocity over the cardiac cycle, measured in three previous studies

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  Fig. 2. Maps showing WSS metrics averaged across subjects, and corresponding frequency histograms, computed for the three inlet waveforms BC1–BC3. The proximal end of the RCA is at the top of each map. Geometries did not include branches

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  Fig. 3. Maps showing WSS metrics, averaged across subjects, and corresponding frequency histograms for branched and branchless configurations. The proximal end of the RCA is at the top of each map

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  Fig. 4. (a) Maps showing fatty streak prevalence averaged across subjects of the PDAY study for four individual age ranges (values in years) and for all ages combined. (b) Maps showing WSS metrics averaged across subjects for dynamic coronary geometries with inflow waveforms BC2 (top row) and BC1 (middle row), and for static coronary geometries with inflow waveform BC2 (bottom row). Colour coding shows rank within each map (e.g. dark blue = lowest ranked value). The proximal end of the RCA is at the top of each map

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  Fig. 5. Polar plots tracking the direction and magnitude of the instantaneous WSS vector over the cardiac cycle at a single location on the wall. Simulations used inflow waveform BC1 (left) or BC2 (right). Each point represents the position of the tip of one instantaneous vector with its origin at 0,0. The X and Y axes represent WSS components oriented along the circumference and axis of the vessel, respectively, with proximal-to-distal flow producing negative axial values. Colour coding shows time throughout the cardiac cycle. The blue arrow is the mean vector. BC1 produces more instantaneous vectors than BC2 that are in the opposite direction to the mean vector. (Note the different scales.)