Fluid–Structure Interaction Modeling of Ascending Thoracic Aortic Aneurysms in SimVascular

Abstract

Ascending Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm (ATAA) is a permanent dilatation of the aorta which is usually related to tissue degeneration, hemodynamic conditions, lifestyle, environmental and genetic factors. As the mechanical conditions can become critical in a dilated aorta, a patient-specific computational model can be very useful to assist clinical decisions in the management of ATAAs. In this article, we model the biomechanical conditions of ATAA by performing Fluid–Structure Interaction (FSI) simulations in the SimVascular open-source software package. The patient-specific geometric model is reconstructed from Computed Tomography scan (CT). The numerical implementation takes into account patient-specific outlet conditions and a temporal flow variation at the model inlet. We performed a mesh convergence analysis on a new mesh reconstruction method in SimVascular and showed that it can significantly reduce the computational cost without impacting the accuracy.