On the computation of hemodynamic forces in the heart chambers.

The hemodynamic forces exchanged between the blood flowing in the heart and the myocardium are recently receiving attention as an important marker of cardiac function. The increasing interest was associated to the advent of advanced imaging methods able to measure the blood velocity field inside the cardiac chambers, from which flow forces are obtained as volume integral of the fluid momentum. These technologies, however, require costly equipment and time-consuming procedures. A different formulation of the balance of momentum, introduced here, permits the computation of hemodynamic forces from geometric and velocity data at the boundary of the blood volume, without the need of measuring the blood velocity inside. This method is valid in generic geometry and is verified in a relatively complex geometry by comparison with results from direct numerical simulation. This approach may permit to integrate the description of cardiac function based on volumetric changes and myocardial deformation with those of hemodynamic forces.