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Intracranial Aneurysms: Modeling Inception and Enlargement

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Computer Models in Biomechanics

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Abstract

Intracranial aneurysms (IAs) are abnormal dilatations of the cerebral vasculature. Computational modeling may shed light on the aetiology of the disease and lead to improved criteria to assist diagnostic decisions. We briefly review the literature and present novel models on two topical areas of research activity: modeling IA inception and modeling IA evolution. We present a novel computational methodology to remove an IA and reconstruct the geometry of the (unknown) healthy artery. This approach is applied to 22 clinical cases (the largest study of its kind to date) and we analyze whether spatial distributions of hemodynamic stimuli correlate with locations aneurysms are known, a priori, to form. In this study, locations of aneurysm formation are strongly correlated with regions of high wall shear stress (WSS) (19/22 positive correlations); however low correlations are observed with indices which characterize the oscillatory nature of the direction of the wall shear stress vector, e.g., oscillatory shear index (OSI) (7/22). We subsequently outline a fluid-solid-growth framework for modeling aneurysm evolution and illustrate its application to 4 clinical cases depicting IAs. We conclude with a discussion for the direction of future research in this field.

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Acknowledgements

Paul N. Watton is funded by the Center of Excellence in Personalized Healthcare (funded by the Wellcome Trust and EPSRC, grant number WT 088877/Z/09/Z). This support is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Paul N. Watton, Haoyu Chen, Alisa Selimovic, Harry Thompson & Yiannis Ventikos

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  1. Paul N. Watton
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  2. Haoyu Chen
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  3. Alisa Selimovic
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  4. Harry Thompson
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  5. Yiannis Ventikos
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Correspondence to Paul N. Watton .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biomechanics, Center of Biomedical Engineering, Graz University of Technology, Kronegasse 5-I, Graz, 8010, Austria

    Gerhard A. Holzapfel

  2. Dept. Mechanical Engineering, Dept. of Bioengineering (courtesy), Stanford University, Lomita Mall 496, Stanford, 94305-4040, California, USA

    Ellen Kuhl

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Watton, P.N., Chen, H., Selimovic, A., Thompson, H., Ventikos, Y. (2013). Intracranial Aneurysms: Modeling Inception and Enlargement. In: Holzapfel, G., Kuhl, E. (eds) Computer Models in Biomechanics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5464-5_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5464-5_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-5463-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-5464-5

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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