Analysis of Intracranial Aneurysm Haemodynamics Altered by Wall Movement

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics is intensively used to deepen our understanding of aneurysm growth and rupture in an attempt to support physicians during therapy planning. Numerous studies assumed fully rigid vessel walls in their simulations, whose sole haemodynamics may fail to provide a satisfactory criterion for rupture risk assessment. Moreover, direct in vivo observations of intracranial aneurysm pulsation were recently reported, encouraging the development of fluid–structure interaction for their modelling and for new assessments. In this work, we describe a new fluid–structure interaction functional setting for the careful evaluation of different aneurysm shapes. The configurations consist of three real aneurysm domes positioned on a toroidal channel. All geometric features, employed meshes, flow quantities, comparisons with the rigid wall model and corresponding plots are provided for the sake of reproducibility. The results emphasise the alteration of flow patterns and haemodynamic descriptors when wall deformations were taken into account compared with a standard rigid wall approach, thereby underlining the impact of fluid–structure interaction modelling.