Dynamic response of stenotic blood flow in vivo

Numerical simulation of physiologically relevant pulsatile flow of blood with shear-rate-dependent viscosity in a stenosed blood vessel

Pulsatile flow of blood in a blood vessel having time-dependent shape (diameter) is investigated numerically in order to understand some important physiological phenomena in arteries. A smooth axi-symmetric cosine shaped constriction is considered. To mimic the realistic situation as far as possible, viscosity of blood is taken to be non-uniform, a shear-thinning viscosity model is considered and a physiologically relevant pulsatile flow is introduced. Taking advantage of axi-symmetry in the proposed problem, the stream function–vorticity formulation is used to solve the governing equations for blood flow. Effect of different parameters associated with the problem on the flow pattern has been investigated and disparities from the Newtonian case are discussed in detail.

An improved baseline model for a human arterial network to study the impact of aneurysms on pressure-flow waveforms

In this study, an improved and robust one-dimensional human arterial network model is presented. The one-dimensional blood flow equations are solved using the Taylor-locally conservative Galerkin finite element method. The model improvements are carried out by adopting parts of the physical models from different authors to establish an accurate baseline model. The predicted pressure-flow waveforms at various monitoring positions are compared against in vivo measurements from published works. The results obtained show that wave shapes predicted are similar to that of the experimental data and exhibit a good overall agreement with measured waveforms. Finally, computational studies on the influence of an abdominal aortic aneurysm are presented. The presence of aneurysms results in a significant change in the waveforms throughout the network.

Theoretical modeling of micro-scale biological phenomena in human coronary arteries

This paper presents a mathematical model of biological structures in relation to coronary arteries with atherosclerosis. A set of equations has been derived to compute blood flow through these transport vessels with variable axial and radial geometries. Three-dimensional reconstructions of diseased arteries from cadavers have shown that atherosclerotic lesions spiral through the artery. The theoretical framework is able to explain the phenomenon of lesion distribution in a helical pattern by examining the structural parameters that affect the flow resistance and wall shear stress. The study is useful for connecting the relationship between the arterial wall geometries and hemodynamics of blood. It provides a simple, elegant and non-invasive method to predict flow properties for geometrically complex pathology at micro-scale levels and with low computational cost.

Pulsatile flow of non-Newtonian fluids through arterial stenoses

The problem of blood flow through stenoses is solved using the incompressible generalized Newtonian model. The Herschel-Bulkley, Bingham and power-law fluids are incorporated. The geometry corresponds to a rigid circular tube with a partial occlusion. Calculations are performed by a Galerkin finite-element method. For the pulsatile case, a predictor-corrector time marching scheme is used with an adaptive time step. Results are obtained for steady and pulsatile physiological flows. Computations show that the memory effects taken into account in the model affect deeply the flow compared with Newtonian reference case. The disturbances are stronger by their vorticity intensity and persist after the geometrical obstacle. This is especially true for severe stenoses.