Fluid and structural modeling of the disease-free and atherosclerotic human carotid bifurcation

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. It claims more lives each year than the next 7 leading causes of death combined. Atherosclerosis is a major cause of cardiovascular disease and is an inflammatory process characterized by intimal thickening of arteries and plaque build up. Atherosclerosis can also damage the arterial wall and in turn cause the formation of a thrombus that can partially or totally occlude the diseased artery. If the actual vessel is the carotid artery, this often leads to a stroke. The focus of this study is to analyze the blood flow and arterial wall motion in the carotid bifurcation, a frequently diseased site of the cerebral circulation. Using ultrasound velocity measurements and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of normal volunteers and patients in vivo, realistic blood velocity profiles and wall anatomy geometries are generated and imported into a commercial finite element package, ADINA (Automatic Dynamic Incremental Nonlinear Analysis, Watertown, MA) for computational analysis. Using three types of 3D transient finite element analyses: structure only, rigid walled fluid only and fully coupled fluid-structure interaction, areas of low fluid shear stress and high mechanical strain are identified. These results are compared with experimental evidence collected from the literature as well as histological data of plaque gathered from imaged patients after endarterectomy to identify potential correlations with regions of inflammation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Younis, Hesham F. (Hesham Farouk)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Roger D. Kamm.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8335

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8335