Investigation of blood flow through the mitral valve

The mitral valve is a heart valve located in between the left atrium and ventricle. Mitral valve failure occurs due to various reasons resulting in backflow of blood from the ventricle to the atrium. Severe failure requires surgical repair. Medical professionals have different opinions on surgical repair methods. This paper describes the development of an in vitro platform to test effectiveness of a surgical repair method. The study is done experimentally using flow visualisation and numerically using computational fluid dynamics. From the experimental results, it is seen that the flow through an open mitral valve produces two vortices. The set-up can be used as a testing protocol for the testing of surgical repair methods. The numerical results mimic the results from the experimental testing and can be further developed for future testing of the mitral valve failures and repairs