IMR Press / RCM / Volume 24 / Issue 12 / DOI: 10.31083/j.rcm2412351
Open Access Original Research
Studying the Influence of Finite Element Mesh Size on the Accuracy of Ventricular Tachycardia Simulation
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1 College of Biomedical Engineering & Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, 310058 Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
2 School of Biomedical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, 116024 Dalian, Liaoning, China
3 Department of Radiology, Beijing Anzhen Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, 100029 Beijing, China
4 Department of Radiology, Dushu Lake Hospital Affiliated to Soochow University, 215000 Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
5 Department of Cardiology, Beijing Anzhen Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, 100029 Beijing, China
6 Department of General Medicine, Liaoning Cancer Hospital of Dalian University of Technology, 116024 Dalian, Liaoning, China
7 Department of Cardiology, Fushun Central Hospital, 113006 Fushun, Liaoning, China
8 Research Center for Healthcare Data Science, Zhejiang Lab, 310003 Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
*Correspondence: wuyongquan67@163.com (Yongquan Wu); dengdongdong@dlut.edu.cn (Dongdong Deng); xialing@zju.edu.cn (Ling Xia)
These authors contributed equally.
Rev. Cardiovasc. Med. 2023, 24(12), 351; https://doi.org/10.31083/j.rcm2412351
Submitted: 21 March 2023 | Revised: 12 July 2023 | Accepted: 17 July 2023 | Published: 13 December 2023
Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s). Published by IMR Press.
This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license.
Abstract

Background: Ventricular tachycardia (VT) is a life-threatening heart condition commonly seen in patients with myocardial infarction (MI). Although personalized computational modeling has been used to understand VT and its treatment noninvasively, this approach can be computationally intensive and time consuming. Therefore, finding a balance between mesh size and computational efficiency is important. This study aimed to find an optimal mesh resolution that minimizes the need for computational resources while maintaining numerical accuracy and to investigate the effect of mesh resolution variation on the simulation results. Methods: We constructed ventricular models from contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging data from six patients with MI. We created seven different models for each patient, with average edge lengths ranging from 315 to 645 µm using commercial software, Mimics. Programmed electrical stimulation was used to assess VT inducibility from 19 sites in each heart model. Results: The simulation results in the slab model with adaptive tetrahedral mesh (same as in the patient-specific model) showed that the absolute and relative differences in conduction velocity (CV) were 6.1 cm/s and 7.8% between average mesh sizes of 142 and 600 µm, respectively. However, the simulation results in the six patient-specific models showed that average mesh sizes with 350 µm yielded over 85% accuracy for clinically relevant VT. Although average mesh sizes of 417 and 478 µm could also achieve approximately 80% accuracy for clinically relevant VT, the percentage of incorrectly predicted VTs increases. When conductivity was modified to match the CV in the model with the finest mesh size, the overall ratio of positively predicted VT increased. Conclusions: The proposed personalized heart model could achieve an optimal balance between simulation time and VT prediction accuracy when discretized with adaptive tetrahedral meshes with an average edge length about 350 µm.

Keywords
ventricular tachycardia
computational modeling
mesh resolution
conduction velocity
tetrahedral meshes
Funding
81901841/National Natural Science Foundation of China
62171408/National Natural Science Foundation of China
2022-YGJC-19/Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province
2020C03016/Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province
2023C03088/Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province
2022ND0AC01/Key Research Project of Zhejiang Lab
Figures
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