A methodology for numerically analysing the hepatic artery haemodynamics during B-TACE: a proof of concept

abstract

Balloon-occluded transarterial chemoembolisation (B-TACE) is an intraarterial transcatheter treatment for liver cancer. In B-TACE, an artery-occluding microballoon catheter occludes an artery and promotes collateral circulation for drug delivery to tumours. This paper presents a methodology for analysing the haemodynamics during B-TACE, by combining zero-dimensional and three-dimensional modelling tools. As a proof of concept, we apply the methodology to a patient-specific hepatic artery geometry and analyse two catheter locations. Results show that the blood flow redistribution can be predicted in this proof-of-concept study, suggesting that this approach could potentially be used to optimise catheter location.

Keywords:

• Liver cancer
• B-TACE
• haemodynamics
• computational fluid dynamics
• 0D modelling
• 3D modelling

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by TERUMO EUROPE, NV (Leuven, Belgium) and by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spanish Government) through project DPI2015-68985-R. We acknowledge the support of Cátedra Fundación Antonio Aranzábal, Universidad de Navarra.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.