Arterial circulation and disease processes

Atherosclerosis is an arterial disease resulting in thickening of the arterial wall and occlusion of the vessels in advanced stages. In addition to hereditary and environmental factors, the effect of fluid-induced stresses on the arterial wall has also been implicated on the etiology of the disease due to the fact that the lesions are found in arterial curvature and branching sites with complex flow dynamics. In this chapter, the computational modeling of the fluid dynamics in the coronary arteries and the aorta is discussed in order to determine the relationship between wall shear stress and its temporal and spatial gradients with the disease progression. The importance of the use of three-dimensional geometry of the region of interest from imaged data, the effect of boundary conditions as well as the unsteady flow analysis on the results are discussed. The modeling of the flow dynamics in the abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) geometrical models, as well as models of vascular graft anastomotic regions is also discussed.