Expert recommendations on the assessment of wall shear stress in human coronary arteries : existing methodologies, technical considerations, and clinical applications

The aim of this manuscript is to provide guidelines for appropriate use of CFD to obtain reproducible and reliable wall shear stress maps in native and instrumented human coronary arteries. The outcome of CFD heavily depends on the quality of the input data, which include vessel geometrical data, proper boundary conditions, and material models. Available methodologies to reconstruct coronary artery anatomy are discussed in ‘Imaging coronary arteries: a brief review’ section. Computational procedures implemented to simulate blood flow in native coronary arteries are presented in ‘Wall shear stress in native arteries’ section. The effect of including different geometrical scales due to the presence of stent struts in instrumented arteries is highlighted in ‘Wall shear stress in stents’ section. The clinical implications are discussed in ‘Clinical applications’ section, and concluding remarks are presented in ‘Concluding remarks’ section.