Blood Flow Dynamic and Fluid-Structure Interaction in Patient-Specific Circle of Willis

Abstract

Over 50% stroke is related to the cerebral artery stenosis. The most common position is in the Circle of Willis (CoW), which is composed of a single anterior communicating artery (ACoA), paired anterior cerebral arteries (ACA), paired middle cerebral arteries (MCA), internal carotid arteries (ICA), posterior communicating arteries (PCoA) and posterior cerebral arteries (PCA). Detailed knowledge of the cerebral hemodynamics is important for a variety of clinical applications [1]. There has been a significant body of research performed on blood flow in the CoW [1,2] treating the cerebral vasculature as a 2D structure. To obtain more accurate hemodynamic results, 3D models should be considered. Studies have been performed on 3D models of the CoW generated from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data [3,4]. However, those 3D models neglected the effects of fluid-structure interaction (FSI) between the vessel wall and blood. In this paper, a patient-specific model of CoW from CT scan data was reconstructed and FLUENT 6.1 was used to simulate the blood flow in the CoW. On a special part of CoW, a 3D FSI model for the arteries was introduced to investigate both flow and structure behaviors, as well as their interaction by ADINA 8.3.