Effects of wall compliance on pulsatile flow in a full-scale, patient-specific cerebral aneurysm model: Particle image velocimetry experiments

Abstract

The hemodynamics of elastic cerebral aneurysms are complicated by phenomena that affect the initiation and the progress of each aneurysm. The blood vessel deforms with pulsatile flow. In a phantom, however, it remains unclear whether the wall compliance can be neglected. In our previous study, the flow structure at another plane oriented perpendicular to the median plane was not clarified. In the approach presented here, an identical phantom is used for both the rigid and elastic wall models by adjusting the surrounding fluid when immersed in a bath. For this purpose, the full-scale phantom of an aneurysm was fabricated using a silicone elastomer. The hemodynamic factors at the orthogonal planes in the non-deformable and deformable models of the bifurcation in the middle cerebral artery were examined. Using two-dimensional particle image velocimetry, the flow velocity, the wall shear stress (WSS), the WSS gradient (WSSG), and the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) were measured during pulsatile flow. Overall, the WSSG at the median plane is smaller than that at corresponding perpendicular plane. Additionally, the TKE in the deformable model is smaller than that in the non-deformable model. Our results have clarified the complex effects of aneurysm wall compliance on these hemodynamic factors.