CFD simulation of hemodynamics in patients pre and post-initiation of unilateral cerebral aneurysm.
Five percent of adults are affected by brain aneurysms; one ruptures every 18 minutes. Forty percent of ruptures are fatal, while 2/3 of survivors suffer permanent neurologic injury. For this reason an understanding of their cause is imperative. Although there is a lot of research focuses on the prevention of rupture once an aneurysm has formed, there is little known about their initiation. We hypothesise that flow characteristics could have a significant impact in this initiation and we are therefore using computational fluid dynamics to simulate the fluid flow in patients with a unilateral aneurysm. By using medical images taken from such patients alongside digital tools, we are able to model the flow in the pre-aneurysm state and isolate flow properties which could be leading to their cause. Further to this computational work, we are experimentally testing these hypotheses using cutting edge 3D bioprinting and PIV techniques alongside our expertise in cell culturing. The project is therefore multidisciplinary, involving a range of experts from high performance computational simulation to molecular biology, in a collaborative effort involving researchers from all over the world.