Morphological and hemodynamic changes during cerebral aneurysm growth

Emily R. Nordahl, Susheil Uthamaraj, Kendall D. Dennis, Alena Sejkorová, Aleš Hejčl, Jaroslav Hron, Helena Švihlová, Kent D. Carlson, Yildirim Bora Suzen, Dan Dragomir-Daescu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has grown as a tool to help understand the hemodynamic properties related to the rupture of cerebral aneurysms. Few of these studies deal specifically with aneurysm growth and most only use a single time instance within the aneurysm growth history. The present retrospective study investigated four patient-specific aneurysms, once at initial diagnosis and then at follow-up, to analyze hemodynamic and morphological changes. Aneurysm geometries were segmented via the medical image processing software Mimics. The geometries were meshed and a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed using ANSYS. Results showed that major geometry bulk growth occurred in areas of low wall shear stress (WSS). Wall shape remod-eling near neck impingement regions occurred in areas with large gradients of WSS and oscillatory shear index. This study found that growth occurred in areas where low WSS was accompanied by high velocity gradients between the aneurysm wall and large swirling flow structures. A new finding was that all cases showed an increase in kinetic energy from the first time point to the second, and this change in kinetic energy seems correlated to the change in aneurysm volume.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number520
JournalBrain Sciences
Volume11
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021

Keywords

  • Aneurysm growth
  • Computational fluid dynamics
  • Hemodynamics
  • Kinetic energy
  • Oscillatory shear index
  • Wall shear stress

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Neuroscience

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