Computational Hemodynamics

Book chapter, 2012

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a tool with great potential in medicine. Using traditional engineering techniques, one may compute, e.g., the blood flow in arteries and the resulting stress on the vessel wall to understand, treat and prevent various cardiovascular diseases. This chapter is devoted to the computation of blood flow in large cerebral arteries and how the blood flow affects the development and rupture of aneurysms. We discuss the process, from generating geometries from medical imaging data to performing patient-specific simulations of hemodynamics in FEniCS. Specifically, we present three different applications: simulations related to a recently published study by Lindekleiv et al. [2010] concerning gender differences in cerebral arteries, a study of the carotid arteries of a canine with an induced aneurysm described in Jiang et al. [2010], and a study of the blood flow in a healthy Circle of Willis, where patient-specific velocity measurements are compared with a model for the peripheral resistance.