The combination of magnetic resonance angiography and computational fluid dynamics: a critical review

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has proven to be a valuable technique in the study of blood flow in arteries because of its capability of obtaining quantitatively velocities and wall shear stress. However, the "bottleneck" problem limiting the application of CFD is the difficulty of constructing anatomically realistic arterial geometries. In this survey, an overview is presented of the progress over the last decade in the development of magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) techniques, medical image processing and CFD, as well as the combination of these techniques in hemodynamics research. It is demonstrated that with modern angiographic techniques such as MRA, noninvasive measurement of human angiograms becomes possible and practical. Together with digital medical image processing and analysis techniques, computational models can be constructed for the "real" human arteries without making any geometric assumptions. When allied with state-of-the-art CFD codes, velocity and wall shear stress distributions, as well as particle trajectories, can be determined in the arteries.