Virtual deployment of pipeline flow diverters in cerebral vessels with aneurysms to understand thrombosis

Abstract : We present a prototype software to virtually deploy pipeline fl ow diverting stents in intracranial vessels with aneurysms. The fi nal objective is to understand the biological and biomechanical mechanisms underlying the stent-induced clot formation within the aneurysm. The weaving pattern of the selected pipeline stent is described w.r.t. cylindrical coordinates. Patient-speci fic 3D vascular geometry is extracted by a level-set image segmentation algorithm. A deformable cylindrical simplex mesh model is used to simulate the virtual stent positioning. A continuous Right Generalized Cylinder model is then used to obtain the mapping of the stent geometry onto the deformed cylindrical surface. Meshes representing the vessel/aneurysm surface and the fi laments of the stent are used as input to simulate the fl uid dynamics without and with the virtual stent. Lattice Boltzmann method is used to solve the equations. We show preliminary visual results on a first patient.