Patient-specific modeling and multi-scale blood simulation for computational hemodynamic study on the human cerebrovascular system.

To develop a targeted drug delivery system for cerebrovascular disorders such as stroke, it is important to obtain detailed information on flow rates and hemodynamics of the human cerebrovascular system for individual patients. A patient-specific integrated numerical simulation system has been developed by the authors such that vascular geometry is constructed from medical images such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT) data, and computational conditions are modeled mathematically to represent the realistic in vivo environments. In general, the three-dimensional numerical simulation using a patient-specific model is conducted only for a localized diseased region with atherosclerosis or an aneurysm. Although the analysis region is only a part of the circulatory system, the simulation should include the effects from the entire circulatory system. Since the peripheral network determines the flow distributions in the cerebrovascular system, the paper reviews the recent simulation methods to take into account the network by coupling the image-based three-dimensional simulation with a one- and zero-dimensional simulations as an outflow boundary condition The paper shows the mathematical modeling of the multi-scale outflow boundary condition and its applications to patient- specific models of the arterial circle of Willis. The results are compared to those using the conventional, free-stream boundary condition. As a result, the multi-scale outflow boundary condition shows a significant difference in flow rate of each artery and in flow distribution in the arterial circle of Willis.