Simulation of Blood Flow and Contrast Medium Propagation for a Vascular Interventional Radiology Simulator

Minimally invasive technique provides a revolutionized clinical therapy, which significantly reduces operation trauma, recovery time, and overall clinical costs. Interventional radiologists use this technique to access vascular systems, and use catheterization to navigate to the region of interest with the help of the medical imaging technique. Medical education and training offer a virtual clinical environment for doctors to have highly qualified professional skills, and to provide high-quality care to patients. This project is mainly based on a framework of virtual catheterisation simulator (VCSim) developed in St Mary’s hospital, Imperial College London. This simulator models instruments using a mass-spring model, and provides interfaces with interventional radiology specific haptic devices. Clinicians are able to use this simulator to practice catheterization through different realistic vascular models. However, during virtual fluoroscopy, the vascular surfaces cannot be seen clearly without medical contrast medium which highlights the vessels. With the effect of beating blood flow produced by heart rate, contrast medium mixes and propagates through vasculature and allows visualisation of the blood vessels. This is called an angiography. This project aims to simulate blood flow and contrast medium propagation in three dimensional virtual vasculatures reconstructed from real patient CT scans. The useful information such as bifurcation and cross-section of vasculature are obtained from the corresponding centreline generated from patient datasets and processed through a centreline reconstruction tool. The blood flow is controlled by a beating heart model, interacting with the contrast medium propagation. The contrast medium is modelled using smoothed-particle hydrodynamics, and is constrained by three forces produced by initial injection, collision with vessel walls and beating blood flow. Moreover, an infinite number of injections are possible, and an initial review system, based on snap shot of the injection, is proposed. Furthermore, this project uses a haptic device to track a real catheter and control its virtual counterpart. On the same model, a real syringe is used to inject virtual contrast medium through the catheter as a clinician would do in real life. The simulation is tested in three different vasculatures, and theoretically supports complex vasculatures with a large number of branches and sub-branches. Further, the simulation is evaluated both by clinicians and through comparison with real injection videos. The result is convincing and can be used as the foundation of a more realistic contrast medium under specific and complex blood flow cases. This MSc individual project is developed under the supervision of Dr. Fernando Bello and Dr. Vincent Luboz at St Mary’s hospital, Imperial College London.

[1]  John ffitch,et al.  Course notes , 1975, SIGSAM Bull..

[2]  William T. Reeves,et al.  Particle systems—a technique for modeling a class of fuzzy objects , 1983, International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

[3]  Alain Fournier,et al.  A simple model of ocean waves , 1986, SIGGRAPH.

[4]  T. Mori,et al.  [Cavernous angioma of falx cerebri; case report]. , 1991, No shinkei geka. Neurological surgery.

[5]  A. Manhire.  Radiology and Imaging for Medical Students , 1994 .

[6]  Markus H. Gross,et al.  Simulating facial surgery using finite element models , 1996, SIGGRAPH.

[7]  Dimitris N. Metaxas,et al.  Realistic Animation of Liquids , 1996, Graphics Interface.

[8]  T L Chenevert,et al.  The effects of time varying intravascular signal intensity and k‐space acquisition order on three‐dimensional MR angiography image quality , 1996, Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI.

[9]  Dimitris N. Metaxas,et al.  Modeling the motion of a hot, turbulent gas , 1997, SIGGRAPH.

[10]  Sarah F. Frisken.  3D Chainmail: A Fast Algorithm for Deforming Volumetric Objects , 1997, SI3D.

[11]  Jos Stam,et al.  Stable fluids , 1999, SIGGRAPH.

[12]  J. Morris.  Simulating surface tension with smoothed particle hydrodynamics , 2000 .

[13]  Bernhard Preim,et al.  3D-Interaction Techniques for Planning of Oncologic Soft Tissue Operations , 2001, Graphics Interface.

[14]  Dongfeng Wang,et al.  Three-dimensional virtual-reality surgical planning and soft-tissue prediction for orthognathic surgery , 2001, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

[15]  Marie-Paule Cani,et al.  Interactive animation of ocean waves , 2002, SCA '02.

[16]  Chee-Kong Chui,et al.  Training and pretreatment planning of interventional neuroradiology procedures--initial clinical validation. , 2002, Studies in health technology and informatics.

[17]  Markus H. Gross,et al.  Particle-based fluid simulation for interactive applications , 2003, SCA '03.

[18]  Guang-Zhong Yang,et al.  Building optimal statistical deformable surface models , 2003, 4th International IEEE EMBS Special Topic Conference on Information Technology Applications in Biomedicine, 2003..

[19]  D. Saloner,et al.  Transport of contrast agents in contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography. , 2004, Magnetic resonance imaging.

[20]  Sir Ara W Darzi,et al.  The impact of minimally invasive surgical techniques. , 2004, Annual review of medicine.

[21]  Philippe Beaudoin,et al.  Particle-based viscoelastic fluid simulation , 2005, SCA '05.

[22]  Hiroshi Oyama,et al.  Physics-Based Simulation of Surgical Fields for Preoperative Strategic Planning , 2006, Journal of Medical Systems.

[23]  J. Pelage,et al.  [Interventional radiology]. , 2006, Journal de radiologie.

[24]  Enhua Wu,et al.  Simulation and interaction of fluid dynamics , 2007, The Visual Computer.

[25]  Stephane Cotin,et al.  Real-Time Modeling of Vascular Flow for Angiography Simulation , 2007, MICCAI.

[26]  Fei Wang,et al.  A real-time simulator for interventional radiology , 2008, VRST '08.

[27]  Fernando Bello,et al.  A Virtual Environment for Core Skills Training in Vascular Interventional Radiology , 2008, ISBMS.

[28]  John Kenneth Salisbury,et al.  Representing Fluid with Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics in a Cranial Base Simulator , 2008, MMVR.

[29]  Doug L. James,et al.  Real time physics: class notes , 2008, SIGGRAPH '08.

[30]  Adel Blouza,et al.  Multiobjective optimization of a stent in a fluid-structure context , 2008, GECCO '08.

[31]  Fernando Bello,et al.  Real-time guidewire simulation in complex vascular models , 2009, The Visual Computer.

[32]  Peter J. Hunter,et al.  A Hybrid 1D and 3D Approach to Hemodynamics Modelling for a Patient-Specific Cerebral Vasculature and Aneurysm , 2009, MICCAI.

[33]  Fernando Bello,et al.  Real-time Seldinger technique simulation in complex vascular models , 2009, International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery.

[34]  Erik Reinhard,et al.  Real-time fluid simulation using discrete sine/cosine transforms , 2009, I3D '09.

[35]  M. Mayer,et al.  with boundary condition , 2022 .