COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS SIMULATION OF THE BLOOD FLOW IN THE CIRCLE OF WILLIS

摘要

The blood supply for the brain is born by four arteries, that is, two internal carotid arteries and two vertebral arteries. They are mutually connected at the cerebral base, and form a closed arterial circle, called the circle of Willis, so that the safety of the brain blood supply is increased. However their anastomoses show a very wide variety of atypism. If some of anastomses are very thin, or even do not exist, the safety of the blood supply is not secured. This is particularly important when some diseases such as cerebral thrombosis occurs and the blood flow supply stops unilaterally. Redistribution of the blood supply in such cases is thought to be strongly affected by geometrical configuration of the anastomoses. It is also known that cerebral aneurysms, which may induce serious cerebrovascular diseases, preferentially occur at the circle of Willis. Complex blood flow pattern has been suspected of having an influence on this preference. This is again dependent on complex geometry of the circle. Therefore we conducted a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the blood flow in the circle of Willis, paying attention to the relationship between the geometrical configuration and the redistribution of the blood flow under changing inlet flow conditions.