Closure Mechanics of Mechanical Heart Valve Prostheses – Experimental and Computational Analysis

To better understand the flow pattern and the mechanical environment induced by the single leaflet mechanical heart valves, both experimental and theoretical studies have been conducted. A pulse duplicator was used for driving two mechanical heart valves (Medtronic Hall and Omniscience) and a high speed video camera (500 frames per second) tracked their motion. Several tests, at different heart rates and cardiac outputs (stroke volumes) have been performed. Using a 2D image segmentation tool, developed in Matlab, the information about the instantaneous position of the valve was extracted from each frame of the video data. The pressure drop across the valve and the transvalvular flow has also been measured. The experimental results were in good agreement with the theoretical ones, previously obtained and reported by the authors.