Burgos M A, Sanmiguel-Rojas E, Del Pino C, Sevilla-García M A, Esteban-Ortega F
Departamento de Ingeniería Térmica y de Fluidos, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Cartagena, Spain.
Escuela de Ingenierías Industriales, Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Teatinos, 29071, Málaga, Spain.
Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2017 Aug;274(8):3121-3128. doi: 10.1007/s00405-017-4611-y. Epub 2017 May 25.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a mathematical tool to analyse airflow. As currently CFD is not a usual tool for rhinologists, a group of engineers in collaboration with experts in Rhinology have developed a very intuitive CFD software. The program MECOMLAND only required snapshots from the patient's cross-sectional (tomographic) images, being the output those results originated by CFD, such as airflow distributions, velocity profiles, pressure, temperature, or wall shear stress. This is useful complementary information to cover diagnosis, prognosis, or follow-up of nasal pathologies based on quantitative magnitudes linked to airflow. In addition, the user-friendly environment NOSELAND helps the medical assessment significantly in the post-processing phase with dynamic reports using a 3D endoscopic view. Specialists in Rhinology have been asked for a more intuitive, simple, powerful CFD software to offer more quality and precision in their work to evaluate the nasal airflow. We present MECOMLAND and NOSELAND which have all the expected characteristics to fulfil this demand and offer a proper assessment with the maximum of quality plus safety for the patient. These programs represent a non-invasive, low-cost (as the CT scan is already performed in every patient) alternative for the functional study of the difficult rhinologic case. To validate the software, we studied two groups of patients from the Ear Nose Throat clinic, a first group with normal noses and a second group presenting septal deviations. Wall shear stresses are lower in the cases of normal noses in comparison with those for septal deviation. Besides, velocity field distributions, pressure drop between nasopharynx and the ambient, and flow rates in each nostril were different among the nasal cavities in the two groups. These software modules open up a promising future to simulate the nasal airflow behaviour in virtual surgery intervention scenarios under different pressure or temperature conditions to understand the effects on nasal airflow.
计算流体动力学（CFD）是一种用于分析气流的数学工具。由于目前CFD并非鼻科医生常用的工具，一组工程师与鼻科学专家合作开发了一款非常直观的CFD软件。MECOMLAND程序只需要患者横断面（断层扫描）图像的快照，其输出结果是由CFD得出的，如气流分布、速度剖面、压力、温度或壁面剪应力。这是基于与气流相关的定量指标来辅助鼻腔疾病诊断、预后或随访的有用补充信息。此外，用户友好的NOSELAND环境在后期处理阶段通过使用3D内镜视图的动态报告极大地帮助了医学评估。鼻科学专家一直需要一款更直观、简单、强大的CFD软件，以便在工作中提供更高的质量和精度来评估鼻腔气流。我们展示了MECOMLAND和NOSELAND，它们具备满足这一需求的所有预期特性，并为患者提供高质量且安全的恰当评估。这些程序代表了一种用于疑难鼻科病例功能研究的非侵入性、低成本（因为每个患者都已进行CT扫描）的替代方法。为了验证该软件，我们研究了耳鼻喉科诊所的两组患者，第一组鼻腔正常，第二组存在鼻中隔偏曲。与鼻中隔偏曲的情况相比，正常鼻腔的壁面剪应力更低。此外，两组鼻腔之间的速度场分布、鼻咽与周围环境之间的压降以及每个鼻孔的流速均有所不同。这些软件模块为在不同压力或温度条件下的虚拟手术干预场景中模拟鼻腔气流行为以了解其对鼻腔气流的影响开辟了广阔前景。
