Combined Numerical/Experimental Analysis for Intracranial Aneurysms in a Computational Hemodynamics Patient-Specific Framework

During the past decades, computational fluid mechanics has been pointed as a preferred tool to improve the understanding of vascular diseases. In fact, the technological capacity of acquiring precise images of large circulatory vessels, together with the development of robust computational algorithms that can solve realistic 3D fluid models, opens the path to the production of diagnosis and prognosis tools of potential clinical use. Here, we describe a computational procedure, consisting of image processing and 3D domain reconstruction, mathematical model definition, numerical discretization, and computational postprocessing analysis. This procedure is prone to obtain meaningful 3D descriptions of blood flow. In particular, the postprocessing step has been recently enriched with the possibility of describing the flow structures in the nearest wall layers of the lumen. We illustrate this overview by applying the procedure to a cerebral artery disease. Finally, we propose a comparative analysis that has the potential to deepening our knowledge about the development of this arterial disease.