Design, Implementation, and Validation of a Pulsatile Heart Phantom Pump

Abstract

The developments in Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance allow visualization of blood flow in vivo using these techniques. However, validation tests are needed to determine a gold standard. For the validation tests, controllable systems that can generate pulsatile flow are needed. In this study, we aimed to develop an affordable pulsatile pump and an artificial circulatory system to simulate the blood flow for validation purposes. Initially, the prerequisites for the phantom were pulsating flow output equal to that of the human cardiac pulse pattern; the flow pattern of the mimicked cardiac output should be equal to that of a human, a variable stroke volume (40–120 ml/beat), and a variable heart rate (60–170 bpm). The developed phantom setup was tested with CT scanner. A washout profile was created based on the image intensity of the selected slice. The test was successful for a heart rate of 70 bpm and a stroke volume of 68 ml, but the system failed to work at various heartbeats and stroke volumes. This was due to the problems with software of the microcontroller. As conclusion in this study, we present a proof of concept for a pulsatile heart phantom pump that can be used in validation tests.

Quality Assuring a Ring Vortex Flow Phantom in Real-Time

“…Application of pre-collected visualisation data is reported in Bock et al [35], whilst Meagher et al [36] demonstrate an interesting approach by imaging identical phantoms simultaneously. There is no evidence of both real-time device and real-time flow QA beyond Vali, [28] Durand [29] and Tuncay [37], whose phantoms exhibit fairly simple flow profiles. This forms part of a trend presented in Figure 12 and Figure 13 below, which is that the more complex the flow, the less confidence is achieved through real-time flow QA.…”