Juan R. Cebral | Department of Computational and Data Sciences, George Mason University

Thursday April 5, 4:30 PM | Research 1 Room 301

Relating Cerebral Aneurysm Hemodynamics and Clinical Events

Cerebral aneurysms are pathological dilatations of the arterial walls supplying blood to the brain. The major complication is their rupture and bleeding into the brain, which is often fatal or causes severe disabilities. Understanding the mechanisms responsible for the initiation, progression and rupture of intracranial aneurysms is important for improving current patient evaluation and management. These mechanisms are multi-factorial, but hemodynamics has been identified as one of the key players. In this talk I will summarize our research over the last few years aiming at understanding the role of hemodynamics in the natural history of brain aneurysms. I will briefly review the methodology for patient-specific computational modeling of blood flows from medical images. Then, I will describe population based studies relating hemodynamic characteristics and aneurysm rupture. Finally, I will present some recent results relating hemodynamic forces on the aneurysm wall and the formation of blebs (secondary lobulations or outpouchings found at the dome of many aneurysms).

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