The role of CFD in respiratory medicine: Towards clinical impact

Simulation has established itself as a critical enabling technology for designing and manufacturing safe and effective medical devices. But can it help clinicians diagnose conditions and determine which interventions would be most beneficial for each patient?

This webinar will illustrate the important role CFD simulation can play in diagnosis and intervention planning in respiratory medicine through the example of premature newborn babies in respiratory distress. These patients’ respiratory systems are damaged by exposure to air while they are still developing. Both the lung and airway are damaged, but it is very hard for clinicians to determine the specific problem in each subject. CFD simulations allow the airway to be assessed and breathing quantified in a way not previously achievable, leading to opportunities to improve patient care. The first part of this webinar will demonstrate how CFD simulations can quantify the effect of diseases such as tracheal collapse (tracheomalacia) and how that information can inform clinical decision-making.

Deriving deep insights from validated simulations

CFD simulations of respiratory airflow can reveal localized information about the airway, highlighting which parts of the anatomy are causing high resistance to airflow. Simulations can calculate the effort used in moving air throughout the airway each day and can also show how patients react and change their anatomy in response to breathing difficulties.

For CFD simulations of respiratory airflow to be accepted into clinical care, as they are in cardiovascular medicine, simulations must be validated against measurements in real patients. The second part of this webinar will explain how CFD simulations can be validated in vivo through comparison to velocity fields produced via magnetic resonance velocimetry of the inhaled contrast agent hyperpolarized xenon gas.

What you will learn in this webinar:

• How to create boundary conditions based on human anatomy and physiology from medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
• How to create realistic airway motion in the simulation, which allows diseases in which the airway collapses, such as tracheomalacia, to be studied
• An approach to validating simulation results against velocity fields obtained in vivo
• How CFD simulations can play a role in the future of respiratory medicine

Speakers: