AJP - Heart Calcium Transients and Cell-Sarcomere
HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH
 QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     


Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol (March 27, 2009). doi:10.1152/ajpheart.01182.2008
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
296/6/H1969    most recent
01182.2008v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Olgac, U.
Right arrow Articles by Kurtcuoglu, V.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Olgac, U.
Right arrow Articles by Kurtcuoglu, V.
Submitted on November 12, 2008
Revised on March 5, 2009
Accepted on March 24, 2009

PATIENT-SPECIFIC THREE-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATION OF LDL ACCUMULATION IN A HUMAN LEFT CORONARY ARTERY IN ITS HEALTHY AND ATHEROSCLEROTIC STATES

Ufuk Olgac1, Dimos Poulikakos1, Stefan C Saur1, Hatem Alkadhi2, and Vartan Kurtcuoglu1*

1 ETH Zurich
2 University Hospital Zurich

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: vartan.kurtcuoglu{at}ethz.ch.

We calculate low-density lipoprotein (LDL) transport from blood into arterial walls in a three-dimensional patient-specific model of a human left coronary artery. The in-vivo anatomy data are obtained from computed tomography (CT) images of a patient with coronary artery disease. Models of the artery anatomy in its healthy and diseased states are derived after segmentation of the vessel lumen with and without the detected plaque, respectively. Spatial shear stress distribution at the endothelium is determined through the reconstruction of the arterial blood flow field using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The arterial endothelium is represented by a shear-stress dependent three-pore model taking into account blood plasma and LDL passage through normal junctions, leaky junctions and the vesicular pathway. 70 mmHg and 120 mmHg of intraluminal pressures are employed as the normal and hypertensive operating pressures. By applying our model to both the healthy and diseased states, we show that the location of the plaque in the diseased state corresponds to one of the two sites with predicted high LDL concentration in the healthy state. We further show that in the diseased state, the site with high LDL concentration has shifted distal to the plaque, which is in agreement with the clinical observation that plaques generally grow in the downstream direction. We also demonstrate that hypertension leads to increased number of regions with high LDL concentration, elucidating one of the ways in which hypertension may promote atherosclerosis.







HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH
Visit Other APS Journals Online
Copyright © 1977 by the American Physiological Society.