Virtual Fit Study of Pediatric Heart Assist System

摘要

An innovative pediatric ventricular assist device (PVAD) is being developed to treat young children (2.5kg-15kg) with severe heart failure that otherwise have very few options due to their small size. To optimize the design of the PVAD for the target patient population, three-dimensional anatomical compatibility studies were conducted. The aim of this project was to evaluate the utility of three dimensional reconstructions to obviate fit studies in human subjects. Serial CT scans of the thorax of children (n=3) were obtained as part of routine treatment. The images were pre-processed to enhance contrast segmented semi-automatically, and reconstructed to create surface renderings of the rib cage, chest wall, heart, lungs and liver. These data were then amended with solid models of the implantable hardware, including the PVAD, cannulae and drive line. Manipulation of the relative orientation of the components revealed surgical constraints that may be anticipated and motivated design modifications to improve the anatomic compatibility. Unique challenges associated with these data sets include the availability of pediatric CT images and difficulty of segmentation due to the small scale of the anatomic features as compared to the resolution of the images.