Sharif Digital Repository

This study considers blood flow in total cavopulmonary connection (TCPC) morphology created in Fontan surgical procedure in patients with a single ventricle heart disease. Ordinary process of TCPC operation reduces pulmonary blood flow pulsatility since the right ventricle being bypassed. This reduction may limit the long term outcome of Fontan circulation. There is an idea of increasing pulmonary flow pulsations by keeping Main Pulmonary Artery (MPA) partially open while it was closed in ordinary TCPC operation. The purpose of the present study is to verify the effects of Antegrade Flow (AF) coming through stenosed MPA on pulmonary flow pulsations. The 3D geometry is reconstructed from CT... 

The main goal of this study is to investigate the effects of plaque structure on its stress distribution. Rupture of plaque causes cerebrovascular diseases which lead to high mortality rates all over the world. Computers are powerful tools to understand the mechanism of plaque rupture. In this study, 3D fluid structure interaction simulation is constructed in ABAQUS 6.13 to clarify the relation between stress distribution of plaque and its structure. A model of common carotid artery with distributed stenosis was chosen for the simulation. To investigate the effects of plaque structure on stress distribution, thickness of fibrous cap and lipid core size were varied in the stenosis.... 

This study describes a multidimensional 3D/lumped parameter (LP) model which contains appropriate inflow/outflow boundary conditions in order to model the entire human arterial trees. A new extensive LP model of the entire arterial network (48 arteries) was developed including the effect of vessel diameter tapering and the parameterization of resistance, conductor and inductor variables. A computer aided-design (CAD) algorithm was proposed to efficiently handle the coupling of two or more 3D models with the LP model, and substantially lessen the coupling processing time. Realistic boundary conditions and Navier-Stokes equations in healthy and stenosed models of carotid artery bifurcation... 

Conventional models of cardiovascular system frequently lack required detail and focus primarily on the overall relationship between pressure, flow and volume. This study proposes a localized and regional model of the cardiovascular system. It utilizes noninvasive blood flow and pressure seed data and temporal cardiac muscle regional activity to predict the operation of the heart under normal and congestive heart failure conditions. The analysis considers specific regions of the heart, namely, base, mid and apex of left ventricle. The proposed method of parameter estimation for hydraulic electric analogy model is recursive least squares algorithm. Based on simulation results and comparison... 

A one dimensional model of the pulmonary arterial network along with systemic circulation was introduced to quantify the human pulmonary artery hemodynamics. A lumped parameter model of the right ventricle was used as the inlet boundary condition. A time varying elastance related the volume and pressure of the right ventricle was imposed in the model. By using a four element Windkessel model, blood flow rate throughout the right ventricle was in hand. An asymmetric structured tree was chosen as the outlet boundary conditions. Simulation was based on solving one-dimensional equations of conservation of mass and momentum by using finite volume method. Blood flow rate, pressure and velocity... 

The Fontan surgery is performed on patients with a single ventricle heart defect to prevent the combination of highlyoxygenated and poorly-oxygenated blood. Blood flow in total cavopulmonary connection (TCPC) which culminates an ordinary Fontan operation is practically steady-state but this flow is not appropriate for respiratory systems. This article investigates an approach in Fontan surgery that has been recently proposed in order to make the pulmonary blood flow pulsating. Moreover, for investigating the compliance of vessels and its effects on blood flow in TCPC, we have used the FSI (Fluid Structure Interaction) method as well as rigid wall assumption for comparison purposes. Our TCPC... 

The brain is one of the vital organs in the body. The main cerebral distribution center of blood flow in the brain is the circle of Willis (CoW). In more than 50% of healthy brains and in more than 80% of dysfunctional ones, at least one artery of the circle of Willis is absent or underdeveloped. These variations reduce the collateral flow availability and increase the risk of stroke and transient ischemic attack in patients with atherosclerosis. Thus it is essential to simulate the circle of Willis and investigate the effects of stenosis. In this work the systemic arteries along with the circle of Willis are simulated using the finite volume method and one-dimensional equations of... 

Conventional models of cardiovascular system (CV) frequently lack required detail. Once utilized to study the heart function, these models focus primarily on the overall relationship between pressure, flow and volume. This study proposes a localized and regional model of the CV system. It utilizes non-invasive blood flow and pressure seed data and temporal cardiac muscle regional activation to predict the operation of the heart. Proposed localized analysis considers specific regions of the heart, namely base, mid and apex sections of the left ventricle. This modular system is based on a hydraulic electric analogy model, estimating desired parameters, namely resistance (R), compliance (C),... 

Arterial diseases, namely atherosclerosis, are believed to be a product of abnormal changes in both hemodynamic and non-hemodynamic factors. In order to explornmk,e the role of different factors in initiation and progression of this disease, a CFD technique was applied to study Interaction between the structure of the artery and blood flow for different suggested models that were used to describe mechanics of vessel wall. This study presents a three-dimensional, steady state simulation of blood flow through the single and double layered carotid artery bifurcation using fluid structure interaction (FSI) method. The wall shear stress and mechanical stress/strain are computed and analyzed under... 

Acute hypotension episodes are one of the hemodynamic instabilities with high mortality rate that is frequent among many groups of patients. Prediction of acute hypotension episodes can help clinicians to diagnose the cause of this physiological disorder and select proper treatment based on this diagnosis. In this study new physiological time series are generated based on heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and mean blood pressure time series. Statistical features of these time series are extracted and patients whom are exposed to acute hypotension episodes in future 1 hour time interval and whom are not, are classified based on these features and with the aid of... 

Hemodynamic factors, such as Wall Shear Stress (WSS), play a substantial role in arterial diseases. In the larger arteries, such as the carotid artery, interaction between the vessel wall and blood flow affects the distribution of hemodynamic factors. In the present study, both rigid-wall and deformable-wall models are developed in a 3D numerical simulation to assess the effectiveness of arterial rigidity on worsening hemodynamics, especially WSS. Two different rheological models (Newtonian and CarreauYasuda) have been employed to evaluate the influence of blood, non-Newtonian properties, as well. The importance of vessel wall deformability was compared with the rheological model of blood.... 

Red Blood Cells (RBCs) are the main cells in human blood, with a main role in the mechanical properties of blood as a fluid. Several methods have been improved to simulate the mechanical behavior of RBC in micro-capillaries. Since, in microscopic scales, using discrete models is more preferred than continuum methods, the Moving Particle Semi-Implicit method (MPS), which is a recent innovative particle based method, can simulate micro-fluidic flows based on NavierStokes equations. Although, by recent developments, the MPS method has turned into a considerable tool for modeling blood flow in micro meter dimensions, some problems, such as a commitment to use small time step sizes, still... 

Atherosclerosis is a world-spread and well-known disease. This disease strongly relates to the endothelial cells (ECs) function. Normally, the endothelial cells align in the flow direction in the atheroprotected sites; however, in the case of atheroprone sites these cells orient randomly. The mechanical stimuli such as wall shear stress and strains could determine the morphology and function of the endothelial cells. In the present study, we numerically simulated the left main coronary artery (LCA) and its branches to left anterior descending (LAD) and left circumflex coronary (LCX) artery using fluid-structure interaction (FSI) modeling. The results were presented as longitudinal and... 

In an effort to identify a useful noninvasive screening tool for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) screening, photoplethysmograph (PPG) signals were acquired and analyzed. These PPG signals were recorded during reactive hyperemia experiments consisting of a 4-minute blood flow blockage of the right arm (RA) brachial artery (BA) using a blood pressure cuff inflator. This procedure is usually done for the assessment of endothelial dysfunction which is a risk factor for developing CVD. In this study, signals of the infrared (IR) and red (R) LED's of the PPG sensor were analyzed. These signals were preprocessed, normalized and slow varying component of the signal (DC values) and the pulsatile... 

Cardiovascular diseases are one of the major causes of death in the world; atherosclerosis being one aspect. Carotid bifurcation is one of the sites that are vulnerable to this disease. Wall Shear Stress (WSS) is known to be responsible for the process of atherogenesis. In this study, we have simulated the blood flow for Newtonian and non-Newtonian, steady and unsteady, flow conditions in three idealistic and five realistic geometries. A risk factor has been presented based on the results of wall shear stress and, then, a relation was found between geometrical features and the wall shear stress risk factor. Our main conclusions are: 1) The non-Newtonian behavior of blood elevates the value... 

Mean field independent component analysis (MF-ICA) along with other chemometric techniques was proposed for obtaining more information from multi-component gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric (GC-MS) signals of essential oils (mandarin and lemon as examples). Using these techniques, some fundamental problems during the GC-MS analysis of essential oils such as varying baseline, presence of different types of noise and co-elution have been solved. The parameters affecting MF-ICA algorithm were screened using a 25 factorial design. The optimum conditions for MF-ICA algorithm were followed by deconvolution of complex GC-MS peak clusters. The number of independent components (ICs) (chemical... 

In this study, the fundamental problem of unsteady blood flow in a tube with multi-stenosis is studied. An appropriate shape of the time-dependent multi-stenosis which is overlapping in the realm of formation of arterial narrowing is constructed mathematically. Blood is considered as a viscoelastic fluid characterized by the Oldroyd-B model. For the numerical solution of the problem, which is described by a coupled, non-linear system of partial differential equations (PDEs), with appropriate boundary conditions, the finite difference scheme is adopted. The solution is obtained by the development of an efficient numerical methodology based on the predictor-corrector method. The effects of... 

The function and morphology of Endothelial Cells (ECs) play a key role in atherosclerosis. The mechanical stimuli of ECs, such as Wall Shear Stress (WSS) and arterial wall strain, greatly inuence the function and morphology of these cells. The present article deals with computations of these stimuli for a 3D model of a healthy coronary artery bifurcation. The focus of the study is to propose an accurate method for computations of WSS and strains. Two approaches are considered: Coupled simultaneous simulation of arterial wall and blood flow, called fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) simulation, and decoupled, which simulates each domain (fluid and solid domain) separately. The study... 

In this extended summary, our aim is analyzing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data by independent component analysis (ICA) in order to find regions of brain which were activated by neural activity in human brain. We employ the minimum description length (MDL) criterion to reduce the dimension of the data and estimate the number of components, which makes ICA work more efficiently. We also use a simple oscillating index method to select automatically the components of interest. MDL and oscillating index criteria have not already been used in applying ICA for analyzing fMRI data. In order to investigate the advantage of using MDL and oscillating index, we perform some experiments... 

In the present study, we investigate the effect of the hemodynamic factors of the blood flow on the cerebral aneurysms. To this end, a hypothetical geometry of the aneurysm in the circle of Willis, located in the bifurcation point of the anterior cerebral artery (ACA) and anterior communicating artery (ACoA) is modeled in a three-dimensional manner. Three cases are chosen in the current study: an untreated thin wall (first case), untreated thick wall (second case), and a treated aneurysm (third case). The effect of increasing the aneurysm wall thickness on the deformation and stress distribution of the walls are studied. The obtained results showed that in the second case, a reduction in the...