Finite element simulation of blood flow in the cerebral artery

The purpose of the paper is to develop a numerical simulation system for the clinical study of a cerebral aneurysm. This paper presents the system, which consists of three processes: pre-processing, numerical simulation and post-processing. In the pre-processing process, the three-dimensional solid model was constructed from the computed tomography (CT) angiography raw data. The finite element method (FEM) is used in order to simulate flow in a complicated geometry. The simulation is conducted to investigate hemodynamics of blood flow in the carotid siphon under real flow conditions measured by Doppler ultrasound velocimetry technique. The results are visualized for a better understanding of the flow characteristics such as distributions of the flow pattern and the wall shear stress in the carotid siphon. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.