PMID- 19890715
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20100422
LR  - 20130530
IS  - 1573-9686 (Electronic)
IS  - 0090-6964 (Linking)
VI  - 38
IP  - 2
DP  - 2010 Feb
TI  - Investigation of pulsatile flowfield in healthy thoracic aorta models.
PG  - 391-402
LID - 10.1007/s10439-009-9835-6 [doi]
AB  - Cardiovascular disease is the primary cause of morbidity and mortality in the 
      western world. Complex hemodynamics plays a critical role in the development of 
      aortic dissection and atherosclerosis, as well as many other diseases. Since 
      fundamental fluid mechanics are important for the understanding of the blood flow 
      in the cardiovascular circulatory system of the human body aspects, a joint 
      experimental and numerical study was conducted in this study to determine the 
      distributions of wall shear stress and pressure and oscillatory WSS index, and to 
      examine their correlation with the aortic disorders, especially dissection. 
      Experimentally, the Phase-Contrast Magnetic Resonance Imaging (PC-MRI) method was 
      used to acquire the true geometry of a normal human thoracic aorta, which was 
      readily converted into a transparent thoracic aorta model by the rapid 
      prototyping (RP) technique. The thoracic aorta model was then used in the in 
      vitro experiments and computations. Simulations were performed using the 
      computational fluid dynamic (CFD) code ACE+((R)) to determine flow 
      characteristics of the three-dimensional, pulsatile, incompressible, and 
      Newtonian fluid in the thoracic aorta model. The unsteady boundary conditions at 
      the inlet and the outlet of the aortic flow were specified from the measured 
      flowrate and pressure results during in vitro experiments. For the code 
      validation, the predicted axial velocity reasonably agrees with the PC-MRI 
      experimental data in the oblique sagittal plane of the thoracic aorta model. The 
      thorough analyses of the thoracic aorta flow, WSSs, WSS index (OSI), and wall 
      pressures are presented. The predicted locations of the maxima of WSS and the 
      wall pressure can be then correlated with that of the thoracic aorta dissection, 
      and thereby may lead to a useful biological significance. The numerical results 
      also suggest that the effects of low WSS and high OSI tend to cause wall 
      thickening occurred along the inferior wall of the aortic arch and the anterior 
      wall of the brachiocephalic artery, similar implication reported in a number of 
      previous studies.
FAU - Wen, Chih-Yung
AU  - Wen CY
AD  - Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Cheng-Kung University, No. 1 
      University Road, Tainan City 701, Taiwan, R.O.C. cywen@mail.ncku.edu.tw
FAU - Yang, An-Shik
AU  - Yang AS
FAU - Tseng, Li-Yu
AU  - Tseng LY
FAU - Chai, Jyh-Wen
AU  - Chai JW
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
DEP - 20091105
PL  - United States
TA  - Ann Biomed Eng
JT  - Annals of biomedical engineering
JID - 0361512
SB  - IM
MH  - Aorta, Thoracic/*physiology
MH  - Blood Flow Velocity/*physiology
MH  - Blood Pressure/*physiology
MH  - Elastic Modulus/physiology
MH  - Humans
MH  - *Models, Cardiovascular
MH  - Pulsatile Flow/*physiology
MH  - Shear Strength/physiology
EDAT- 2009/11/06 06:00
MHDA- 2010/04/23 06:00
CRDT- 2009/11/06 06:00
PHST- 2008/12/31 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2009/10/27 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2009/11/06 06:00 [entrez]
PHST- 2009/11/06 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2010/04/23 06:00 [medline]
AID - 10.1007/s10439-009-9835-6 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Ann Biomed Eng. 2010 Feb;38(2):391-402. doi: 10.1007/s10439-009-9835-6. Epub 2009 
      Nov 5.