Patients with mild/moderate coronary stenosis often show mismatches between initial examination results and follow-up outcomes. While regular examinations evaluate stenosis degree, plaque composition, and perfusion function, they frequently ignore flow disorder caused by plaques (especially serial plaques). This study aims to find the characteristics of coronary blood flow patterns in patients with different clinical outcomes. Coronary tree models were established based on CT images of fourteen patients and were divided into adverse event (AE) group and no event (Non-AE) group according to the outcomes. The two groups had similar maximum stenosis degree, lesion length, blood pressure, and CT fractional flow reserve. Abnormal flow patterns were quantified using the reverse zone volume. Wall shear stress (WSS) topological skeleton analysis was used to reveal the correlation between flow patterns and clinical outcomes. The results showed that: 1) The AE group had more chaotic blood flow patterns, with significantly higher cumulative reverse zone volume values (0.032 ± 0.019 vs. 0.0085 ± 0.0097, p = 0.0379) and coefficients of variation (2.24 ± 0.77 vs. 0.91 ± 0.43, p = 0.0018) during a cardiac cycle. 2) WSS vectors showed obvious spatiotemporal variations within reverse zones. The abnormal flow patterns have the potential to reflect the possibility of plaque development and the hemodynamic loads on the vessel walls, which may help to find the high-risk patients with mild/moderate coronary serial stenosis.
Keywords:
Flow pattern; Wall shear stress; Serial plaques; Mild coronary artery stenosis; Hemodynamics