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Artificial heart valve is one of the most important artificial organs which have been implanted to many patients. The most serious problems related to the artificial heart valve prothesis are thrombosis and hemolysis. In vivo experiment to test against this problem is complex and hard work. Nowadays the request for in vitro artificial heart valve testing system is increasing. Several papers have announced us that the flow pattern of artificial heart valve is highly correlated with thrombosis and hemolysis. LDA is a usual method to get flow pattern, which is difficult to operate, is expensive and has narrow measure region. PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) can solve these problems. Because the flow speed of valve is too high to catch particles by CCD camera and high-speed camera (Hyspeed; Holland-Photonics) was used. The estimated max flow speed was 5 m/sec and max trackable length is 0.5 cm, so the shutter speed was determined as 1000 frames per sec. Several image processing techniques (blurring, segmentation, morphology, etc.) were used for the preprocessing. Particle tracking algorithm and 2D interpolation technique which were necessary in making gridrized velocity profile, were applied to this PIV program. By using Single- Pulse Multi-Frame particle tracking algorithm, some problems of PIV can be solved. To eliminate particles which penetrate the sheeted plane and to determine the direction of particle paths are these. 1D relaxation formula is modified to interpolate 2D field. Parachute artificial heart valve which was developed by Scoul National University and Bjork-Shiely valve was testified. For each valve, different flow pattern, velocity profile, wall shear stress, turbulence intensity profile and mean velocity were obtained. Those parameters were compared with the result of in vivo experiment. In this experiment we can conclude wall shear stress is not high enough to generate hemolysis and higher turbulence intensity to make more hemolysis. For further application of high speed camera and image processing techniques for valve performance test, back jet flow, valve leaflet vibration pattern and compliance are remained to be obtained.
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