Better Than Nothing: A Rational Approach for Minimizing the Impact of Outflow Strategy on Cerebrovascular Simulations

Computational fluid dynamics simulations of neurovascular diseases are impacted by various modeling assumptions and uncertainties, including outlet boundary conditions. Many studies of intracranial aneurysms, for example, assume zero pressure at all outlets, often the default ("do-nothing") strategy, with no physiological basis. Others divide outflow according to the outlet diameters cubed, nominally based on the more physiological Murray's law but still susceptible to subjective choices about the segmented model extent. Here we demonstrate the limitations and impact of these outflow strategies, against a novel "splitting" method introduced here.

With our method, the segmented lumen is split into its constituent bifurcations, where flow divisions are estimated locally using a power law. Together these provide the global outflow rate boundary conditions. The impact of outflow strategy on flow rates was tested for 70 cases of MCA aneurysm with 0D simulations. The impact on hemodynamic indices used for rupture status assessment was tested for 10 cases with 3D simulations.

Differences in flow rates among the various strategies were up to 70%, with a non-negligible impact on average and oscillatory wall shear stresses in some cases. Murray-law and splitting methods gave flow rates closest to physiological values reported in the literature; however, only the splitting method was insensitive to arbitrary truncation of the model extent.

Cerebrovascular simulations can depend strongly on the outflow strategy. The default zero-pressure method should be avoided in favor of Murray-law or splitting methods, the latter being released as an open-source tool to encourage the standardization of outflow strategies.