Hemodynamics in the left atrium and its effect on ventricular flow patterns

In the present study, we investigate the hemodynamics inside left atrium (LA) and understand its impact on the development of ventricular flow patterns. We construct the heart model using dynamic-computed tomographic images and perform simulations using an immersed boundary method based flow solver. We show that the atrial hemodynamics is characterized by a circulatory flow generated by the left pulmonary veins (LPVs) and a direct stream from the right pulmonary veins (RPVs). The complex interaction of the vortex rings formed from each of the PVs leads to vortex breakup and annihilation, thereby producing a regularized flow at the mitral annulus. A comparison of the ventricular flow velocities between the physiological and a simplified pipe-based atrium model shows that the overall differences are limited to about 10% of the peak mitral flow velocity. The implications of this finding on the functional morphology of the left heart as well the computational and experimental modeling of ventricular hemodynamics are discussed.