Blood flow in the cerebral venous system: modeling and simulation

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Computational Fluid Dynamics
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Accurate simulation of blood flow in patient-specific geometries is a significant challenge.
• Existing methods often use reduced-order models or partial vascular networks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a fully three-dimensional blood flow simulation pipeline for the complete intracranial venous network.
• To assess the feasibility of using medical imaging data for patient-specific biomechanical modeling.

Main Methods:

• Utilized medical imaging data for 3D reconstruction and meshing of the intracranial venous network.
• Employed the dimensionless Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible viscous fluid flow.
• Numerically solved the equations using a free finite element software with multiple meshes.

Main Results:

• Successfully performed a fully 3D blood flow simulation of the complete intracranial venous circuit.
• Demonstrated the feasibility of the computational pipeline from imaging to simulation.
• Identified asymmetric flow behaviors in merging regions of the venous network in the supine position.

Conclusions:

• The developed pipeline is feasible for simulating blood flow in patient-specific intracranial venous networks.
• This approach enables detailed biomechanical analysis of complex vascular structures.
• Findings highlight specific hemodynamic characteristics of the intracranial venous system.