Towards Mesh-Free Patient-Specific Mitral Valve Modeling

Computational modeling is a tool that has gained importance recently to better understand valve physiopathology, to assess safety and efficacy of cardiovascular devices and as a supporting tool for therapy planning. Mesh-based methods, such as the Finite Element Method (FEM), have shown high accuracy and application modeling the mitral valve (MV). However, when it comes to irregular and complex geometries, FEM techniques suffer from well-documented limitations, such as the labor and time-consuming intrinsic need of a mesh. In this work, novel structural models of the MV and mitral valve regurgitation (MVR) dynamics are presented using a mesh-free method. Obtained results show that the developed models are capable of reproducing MV and MVR behaviour with good agreement with respect to both in-vivo and in-silico studies, in terms of valve closure and opening, valve deformation, as well as stress magnitudes. This paper shows that mesh-free methods have the potential to become a powerful alternative to the currently most used modeling approaches.