Blood flow simulation
Pulse duplicators, sensors, silicone flow phantoms
1 - Pulse duplicating flow loop built in-house capable of simulating blood-like flow of a blood analog fluid through an silicone-model arterial network. This apparatus is equipped with a magnetic resonance imaging compatible Shelly Medical programmabale pump, a temperature bath, compliance and resistance chambers, flow and pressure sensors. Its modular design permits us to easily fit different test modules for studies. It is currently mainly used for aortic endograft deployment and testing.
2 - Vivitro Pulse duplicator, a turn-key flow apparatus for testing prosthetic heart valve performance and ventricular/aortic blood flow. This vendor-designed apparatus is commonly used in the cardiovascular device industry for pre-clinical implant tests for design and development. The apparatus belongs to Prof. K.B. Chandran, a senior colleague in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. The BioMOST Lab has access to this system and has been used for the design and testing of our novel percutaneous heart valve.
3 - Silicone vascular phantoms are in-house fabricated physical replicas of arteries and aneurysms for flow and implant testing. We make, in our lab, models of idealized or patient-specific (based on diagnostic CT or MR data) vascular structures such as aortic and brain aneurysms. These are fit to the pulse duplicating apparatus for studies on blod flow and implant performance. The silicone models may also be fabricated to match the compliance of the vascular structure in vivo by tweaking the silicone grade used and the wall thcikness of the model.
Want more details? See the pages of the lab's staff and students who focus on this topic - Kathleen Lin, Chaid Schwarz, Benjamin Dickerhoff and Rohini Retarekar
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