A review of computational hemodynamics in middle cerebral aneurysms and rheological models for blood flow

Abstract

Cerebrovascular accidents are the third most common cause of death in developed countries. Over recent years, CFD simulations using medical image-based anatomical vascular geometries have been shown to have great potential as a tool for diagnostic and treatment of brain aneurysms, in particular to help advise on the best treatment options. This work aims to present a state of the art review of the different models used in CFD, focusing in particular on modeling blood as a viscoelastic non-Newtonian fluid in order to help understand the role of the complex rheological nature of blood upon the dynamics of middle cerebral aneurysms. Moreover, since the mechanical properties of the vessel walls also play an important role in the cardiovascular system, different models for the arterial structure are reviewed in order to couple CFD and computational solid dynamics to allow the study of the fluid-structure interaction (FSI).