Copyright © 2013 Arjen van der Horst et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A model describing the primary relations between the cardiac muscle and coronary circulation might be useful for interpreting coronary hemodynamics in case multiple types of coronary circulatory disease are present. The main contribution of the present study is the coupling of a microstructure-based heart contraction model with a 1D wave propagation model. The 1D representation of the vessels enables patient-specific modeling of the arteries and/or can serve as boundary conditions for detailed 3D models, while the heart model enables the simulation of cardiac disease, with physiology-based parameter changes. Here, the different components of the model are explained and the ability of the model to describe coronary hemodynamics in health and disease is evaluated. Two disease types are modeled: coronary epicardial stenoses and left ventricular hypertrophy with an aortic valve stenosis. In all simulations (healthy and diseased), the dynamics of pressure and flow qualitatively agreed with observations described in literature. We conclude that the model adequately can predict coronary hemodynamics in both normal and diseased state based on patient-specific clinical data.