Numerical Simulation of Flow in a Physiologically Realistic Model of the Human Aorta With Vessel Compliance and Movement

Vessel compliance and movement are important factors influencing blood flow patterns in arteries in addition to vessel geometry. This importance has been previously demonstrated in the study of coronary artery flow by several investigators. For large vessels such as the aorta, the effects are less well understood because its movement magnitude is relatively small and the movement trace is complex. In this study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) aorta model was reconstructed from magnetic resonance (MR) images, and MRI was used to obtain aortic flow mapping and wall movement data. Under some simplifying assumptions, the data were used to control an aorta model that has moving wall and meshes during a computational simulation. The results of the CFD simulation show similar flow patterns as the MRI results in the ascending aorta, verifying that the model reconstruction and simulation are reasonable.