Computational 3D Modeling of Hemodynamics in the Circle of Willis

This book is the culmination of approximately four§years of study §obtaining my PhD in mechanical engineering, modeling§blood flow §in the arteries of the human brain. Coming from an§engineering §background I found that I had very little knowledge§of human §anatomy, physiology, or medical imaging techniques.§Furthermore, §it seemed reasonable that there would not be many people §possessing a deep knowledge of these fields, and the§more §engineering related fields of computational fluid§dynamics and §mathematical modeling. As a result this book contains§reasonably §detailed background §information on all of the aforementioned fields, in§order to provide §the §novice with a well balanced understanding of all§aspects of this §modeling challenge. The actual body of work involves the §development of techniques to segment out the cerebral§arteries §from magnetic resonance imaging scans, and create the §computational meshes. In addition there is the§development of a §mathematical model of the physiological control§system known as §the §cerebral autoregulation mechanism, and the coupling§of this control §system to the computational fluid dynamics simulations.