DATE: Monday, December 3rd ,2001

TIME: 9:30-10:30 AM

PLACE: 4511 Seamans Center (Please note change from the usual venue.)

SPEAKER: Comprehensive Examination for
Sharan Ramaswamy
Department of Biomedical Engineering
University of Iowa

TITLE: THREE AND FOUR DIMENSIONAL HEMODYNAMICS IN HUMAN CORONARY ARTERY SEGMENTS

ABSTRACT:

Intimal thickening is a normal response to low wall shear
stress. Such thickening is a reaction to certain predispositions
and can eventually develop into atherosclerotic plaque. Insights to
such progression in coronary arteries are at present
very limited. The reason for this is that coronary vessels are
relatively small and tortuous and furthermore, this
tortuosity complicates the ability to localize plaque positions
with respect to vessel curvature, cardiac motion and
pressure and flow changes. However it can be hypothesized that the
localized shear stress distribution in 3-Dimensional
(3-D), time-dependent coronary lumen morphology is related
to regional atherosclerotic plaque severity.

With this hypothesis, and the incorporation of accurate 3-Dimensional
geometries of the coronary vessel morphology, the aim
of this study is to develop a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis to describe local flow dynamics in both 3-D
spatial and 4-D spatial and temporal domains from the accurate and
geometrically uncompromising 3-D reconstructions of
intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and bi-plane angiographic fusion
images. The flow conditions to be considered will include
both steady and unsteady flows as well as analysis of human coronary
vessel segments that incorporates arterial motion. Additionally, arterial flow velocity,wall shear stress and pressure
parameters will be related to the severity of atherosclerotic
plaque and vessel morphology in the coronary
artery segments investigated.