Image-based Mesh Generation in the Field of Cardiology
Bernhard Quatember, Martin Mayr, Hannes Muehlthaler · 2007
We are developing a high-performance computer system to simulate coronary hemody-namics in the clinical domain of coronary artery disease. This system will be suitable for both the diagnosis and therapy of coronary artery disease. The diagnosis of cardiovascular disease and the planning of therapy should be based on a fair knowledge of the patient’s hemodynamic state. This is particularly true of coronary artery disease in cases where severe stenoses in the epicardial arteries increase the resistance to flow. Moreover, the highly disturbed flow around stenoses accelerates the progression of the atherosclerotic changes and may cause the formation of and development of thrombi. We will focus on three-dimensional computer simulation studies of the flow of blood within the epicardial arteries, especially around stenoses (narrowing), since in such sec-tions the knowledge of the flow pattern is highly important to the assessment of the severity of coronary artery disease. We use the commercial CFD software package FI-DAP which is based on the finite element method. For our three-dimensional CFD simulation studies [4, 5], we need a fair knowledge of the geometry of the epicardial ar-teries. Moreover, we must generate a mesh. Both the acquisition of the geometry and the