Finite element simulation of blood flow in the cerebral artery

The purpose of the paper is to develop a numerical simulation system for th e clinical study of a cerebral aneurysm. This paper presents the system, wh ich consists of three processes: pre-processing, numerical simulation and p ost-processing. In the pre-processing process, the three-dimensional solid model was constructed from the computed tomography (CT) angiography raw dat a. The finite element method (FEM) is used in order to simulate flow in a c omplicated geometry. The simulation is conducted to investigate hemodynamic s of blood flow in the carotid siphon under real flow conditions measured b y 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.