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Investigating the Influence of Haemodynamic Stimuli on Intracranial Aneurysm Inception

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Abstract

We propose a novel method to reconstruct the hypothetical geometry of the healthy vasculature prior to intracranial aneurysm (IA) formation: a Frenet frame is calculated along the skeletonization of the arterial geometry; upstream and downstream boundaries of the aneurysmal segment are expressed in terms of the local Frenet frame basis vectors; the hypothetical healthy geometry is then reconstructed by propagating a closed curve along the skeleton using the local Frenet frames so that the upstream boundary is smoothly morphed into the downstream boundary. This methodology takes into account the tortuosity of the arterial vasculature and requires minimal user subjectivity. The method is applied to 22 clinical cases depicting IAs. Computational fluid dynamic simulations of the vasculature without IA are performed and the haemodynamic stimuli in the location of IA formation are examined. We observe that locally elevated wall shear stress (WSS) and gradient oscillatory number (GON) are highly correlated (20/22 for WSS and 19/22 for GON) with regions susceptible to sidewall IA formation whilst haemodynamic indices associated with the oscillation of the WSS vectors have much lower correlations.

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Notes

  1. The Circle of Willis is a circle of arteries at the base of the brain. All the principal arteries that supply blood to the cerebral hemispheres of the brain branch off from the Circle of Willis.

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Acknowledgments

Haoyu Chen is funded by the Qualcomm scholarship provided by Qualcomm Inc. (Qualcomm Inc., San Diego, CA). Alisa Selimovic is funded by the Robert Menzies Memorial Scholarship in Engineering. Paul N. Watton holds a University Research Lectureship funded by the Centre 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

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

  2. BioComputing Competence Centre, B3C, SCS srl, Casalecchio di Reno, BO, Italy

    Alessandro Chiarini

  3. ANSYS-UK Ltd., Milton Park, Abingdon, UK

    Justin Penrose

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  1. Haoyu Chen
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Correspondence to Paul N. Watton.

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Associate Editor Ender A. Finol oversaw the review of this article.

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Chen, H., Selimovic, A., Thompson, H. et al. Investigating the Influence of Haemodynamic Stimuli on Intracranial Aneurysm Inception. Ann Biomed Eng 41, 1492–1504 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-013-0794-6

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