Blood flow and diameter effect in the navigation process of magnetic nanocarriers inside the carotid artery

Abstract

Background and objective: Serious side effects are occurred during the cancer therapy. Magnetic driving of nanoparticles is a novel method for the elimination of these effects by supplying with anticancer drug or increase the temperature of the infected area. For this reason, a numerical model for optimal guidance of nanoparticles, through the gradient magnetic field, inside the human artery system is presented in this study. Methods: The present method couples Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Discrete Element Method (DEM) techniques. In addition, the optimum magnetic intensity each time is evaluated by using the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES). Under five feature blood flow velocities in cardiac cycle, the developed method evaluate and select the optimum gradient magnetic field in order to eliminate the deviation of the guided nanoparticles from a pre-described trajectory. Results: Results of the simulations indicate both the influence of the blood flow and the volume of nanocarriers in the magnetic driving process in real conditions. Specifically, the blood flow and the volume of particles are inversely proportional parameters in the magnetic navigation process. As the blood flow is decreased, the deviation of nanoparticles compared to the desired path is minimized. On the contrary, the decrease of the volume of nanocarriers increase the distance of particles from the described trajectory. However, greater magnetic gradient values are needed as the blood flow is increased. Furthermore, the imposed gradient magnetic values are strongly connected with the position of the nanoparticles and the blood blow velocity. Conclusions: Based on the results of the present study, the most important parameter in the navigation process is the magnetic volume of particles. Under real conditions, the effect of the blood flow is insignificant compared to the volume of particles in the navigation process. In addition, great differences in the optimized magnetic sequence are presented both among the different blood flows and the volume of particles.