Modeling anisotropic material property of cerebral aneurysms for fluid-structure interaction computational simulation

摘要

Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) simulation is a useful tool to estimate the wall stress distribution and predict the rupture risk of a cerebral aneurysm. Accurate simulation is important to assist the treatment of cerebral aneurysms. Although the accuracy has been increased in recent years, the process still remains physically non-reasonable with most simulation studies relying on a uniform wall thickness and isotropic material property. In this paper, we present an anisotropic material property modeling scheme with a non-uniform wall thickness distribution for patient-specific cerebral aneurysms. The non-uniform wall thickness distribution and material anisotropy are obtained through deforming the mesh of a healthy blood-vessel onto an aneurysm model, where the mesh deformation simulates the formation of the aneurysm by stretching the mesh elements. With the addition of material anisotropy, the simulation results can be improved and become more physically meaningful.