Abstract
Pulsatile blood flow is studied in a three-dimensional model of human thoracic aorta at different stages of atherosclerotic lesion growth, taking into account the effect of atherosclerotic plaque location and peripheral symmetry. The model is reconstructed from the computed tomography images. The wall shear stress (WSS), time-averaged WSS, and the oscillatory shear index are applied to determine susceptible sites for the onset of early atherosclerosis. Then, two different degrees of stenosis severity, 50 and 80 %, are introduced to vulnerable areas of the healthy aorta geometry. The overriding issue addressed is that the WSS distribution and magnitude are strongly affected by the atherosclerotic plaque size, its symmetric features, and the location, i.e., the branch it is formed. The present study, for the first time, is capable of providing information on the high shear environment that may exist upon the rupture of plaque surface and any thrombosis due to platelet deposition. The magnitude of WSS and its distribution at the throat of 50 % stenosed aortic arch are in agreement with the previous numerical study (Huang et al. in Exp Fluids 48(3):497–508, 2010). Results show that WSS values exceed 50 Pa at the throat of 80 % stenosed left common carotid and brachiocephalic arteries.
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Acknowledgments
M. Dabagh and P. Jalali would like to thank the financial support from the Academy of Finland (Grant No. 123938). P. Vasava acknowledges support from the Graduate School of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Finland. Special thanks to Matti Sauna-Aho from the South Karelia Central hospital, Lappeenranta, Finland, for providing the computed tomography scans. Authors kindly acknowledge the contribution of Mr. Seyed Mahmoud Mortazavi in the development of the automated method for segmentation of CT images.
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Dabagh, M., Vasava, P. & Jalali, P. Effects of severity and location of stenosis on the hemodynamics in human aorta and its branches. Med Biol Eng Comput 53, 463–476 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-015-1253-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-015-1253-3