Nmerical Simulation of Blood Flow in Stented Aneurysm using Lattice Boltzmann Method

Hemodynamics are thought to play an important role in the creation, thrombosis, recanalization, regrowth and re-bleeding of cerebral aneurysms treated by endovascular means. Recently, the stents for cerebral aneurysms are expected to be flexible enough to prevent injuries in small diameters and intricate vessels. And the lattice Boltzmann method has received considerable interest as an efficient method of computing a variety of fluid flows, especially with complex geometrical configurations. Therefore, 2-dimensional mathematical model of cerebral aneurysm with stent were created. Furthermore, CFD calculations were performed by using lattice BGK model with the assumption of Newtonian fluid property for blood and the rigid wall property for the vessel and the aneurysm. The results suggest that stent prevents vortices driven directly by the parent vessel flow and that the ratio of the stent pore size to the aneurysm orifice size plays an important role in the formation of stented flow pattern, and small pore size is preferable for the aneurysm with large orifice though it causes a kind of orifice effect and prevents the flow reduction in the stented aneurysm with small orifice.