Simulation of Pulsatile Flow in Cerebral Aneurysms: From Medical Images to Flow and Forces

There is a growing medical interest in the prediction of the flow and forces inside cerebral aneurysms [24, 52], with the ultimate goal of supporting medical procedures and decisions by presenting viable scenarios for intervention. The clinical background of intracranial aneurysms and subarachnoid hemorrhages is well introduced in the literature such as [46, 51]. These days, with the development of high-precision medical imaging techniques, the geometry and structure of blood vessels and possible aneurysms that have formed, can be accurately determined. To date, surgeons and radiologists had to make decisions about possible treatment of an aneurysm based on size, shape and location criteria alone. In this chapter we focus on the role of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for therapeutic options in the treatment of aneurysms. The tremendous potential of CFD in this respect was already anticipated in [29]. The value of numerical simulations for treating aneurysms will likely increase further with better quantitative understanding of hemodynamics in cerebral blood flow.