Sleep Apnea causes serious health problems. Engineering consultant Mark Carlson at MSC.Software used EnSight along with Rhino CAD and MSC.Software products, Marc and Patran to model the human jaw and tongue interacting. The final model had 13 different muscle subgroups in the tongue muscle model, a real human composite material.
The beating heart is the generator of blood flow through the cardiovascular system. Within the heart's own chambers, normal complex blood flow patterns can be disturbed by diseases. Methods for the quantification of intra-cardiac blood flow, with its 4D (3D+time) nature, are lacking. We sought to develop and validate a novel semi-automatic analysis approach that integrates flow and morphological data.
Velocity-encoded path lines overlaying the cardiac structure (grayscale MRI images) illustrate the variation in flow velocity from the left atrium through the left ventricle of the beating heart at early and late stages of cardiac filling phase cycle.
Ann F. Bolger, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, has led the multi-disciplinary team, which includes researchers from Linköping University in Sweden, in successfully mapping the multidimensional flow paths, as well as changes in kinetic energy, of blood flowing through the left ventricle of the heart. Their work has brought together specialists in cardiology, physiology, advanced imaging, biomedicine and engineering with the support of the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation.
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A young woman checked into University Hospital Freiburg in
southwestern Germany, complaining of numbness in her arms and signs of
a mild stroke. Relying on conventional diagnostic techniques, local
physicians soon found that the young woman was suffering from a fairly
uncommon condition consisting of a blood clot in the aortic arch, a
part of the body’s main artery, the aorta.
At Rice University in Houston, Texas, members of the Team for Advanced Flow Simulation and Modeling (T*AFSM) are working with team members from other institutions to unlock mysteries of the circulatory system found within the human brain. The group consists of researchers from Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and Bethel University in Minnesota. Their computational resources include the computer modeling methods and programs developed by the T*AFSM and a Cray XD1 supercomputer at Rice. The interdisciplinary team is using computational fluid mechanics and fluid-structure interaction to model cerebral arteries, with the goal of a better understanding—and ultimately, better diagnoses and prognoses—of cerebral aneurysms.
Computational Analysis of Technical Systems (CATS) at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany, use finite element analysis (FEA) techniques using Apple Xserve clusters and Mac desktops using EnSight post-processing software to analyze the results. For the full story, click here.
CATS engineers are working on a titanium tube approximately one inch in diameter by three inches long. A tiny, four-ounce pump, whose design is being continuously refined with the help of Apple and CEI technology, is capable of keeping a cardiac patient alive by pumping 300 liters of blood an hour.
Heart disease, often caused by partially-blocked coronary arteries, is the most common cause of death in the world. With more than one million coronary stent procedures performed in the United States each year, stenting has become one of the most popular forms of treatment to open these plaque-encrusted atherosclerotic coronary arteries.
Thousands of people die each year from ruptured brain and aortic aneurysms. These 'bulges,' which occur in weakened areas of blood vessel walls, can rupture without notice, causing serious complications and even death. Finding ways to quickly and accurately diagnose and prevent these conditions before they rupture will ultimately help physicians lower the toll of this deadly condition.
The simulation shows an aneurysm of a cerebral artery. Warm colors represent regions of high wall displacement,
and cool colors represent regions of low wall displacement.
Promising results are emerging from computer modeling initiatives that use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to help simulate and visualize the flow of blood through the arteries to pinpoint weakened areas.
Over the course of the average lifespan, the human heart will beat more than 3.5 billion times, pumping oxygen-rich blood throughout the body. Modern medical imaging techniques, like ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), have helped scientists to unlock many of the heart’s secrets and aided in the treatment and prevention of numerous cardiac diseases.
Blood flowing into the left ventricle from the mitral valve can be separated according to downstream behavior. Flow that will go directly on to the body without delay is color coded in shades of red; blood that will remain in the heart for one or more additional cycles is colored in shades of blue.
However, one of the most intriguing secrets has remained sealed inside: the flow of blood within the beating heart.
Sixteen milliseconds – one-fifth the speed of the blink of an eye – can mean the difference between life and death for millions of people. How can such a miniscule amount of time have such a profound effect on so many? That’s about how long it takes for one infinitesimal cancer cell to adhere to a new location within the body. In as little as a day, a new tumor is born in a phenomenon known as metastasizing.
In this simulation from Hoskins’ research, one (non-deformable) tumor cell interacts with one white blood cell. Adhesion bonds form and break as the tumor cell passes over the white blood cell. The lines indicate velocity contours and the cells are colored by pressure.
Researchers at North Carolina State University (NCSU) are using EnSight visualizations to investigate a medical condition known as abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), or “triple A” for short. To appreciate the importance of this research, one must consider the number of lives it could potentially save. It is estimated that that about 15,000 people in the U.S. die each year from ruptured AAAs, which is roughly equivalent to the number of murder victims in the U.S. annually.
CEI’s visualization products are used widely to analyze and present the results of CFD and FEA simulations for a variety of biomedical and bioengineering applications. Since many of these involve transient phenomena, the strong animation creation and display features of our products are especially popular. Recently, support for 2D textures has been added, allowing greater realism to your results, important in a field of science unfamiliar with simulations.
Animation shows stent/balloon inflation dynamics and the impact that this has on peak arterial stresses. During inflation, the stent has a tendency to flare at the ends due to the balloon overhang. Increased overhang results in increased stent endflare and peak arterial stresses. This, in turn, can increase the chances of restenosis (uncontrolled cell growth leading to the artery clogging back up). The model is currently being adjusted to test high-pressure and high-resistance lesions. Image courtesy of Matt Hyre, Jim Squire and Raevon Pulliam from the Virginia Military Institute. For the full story, click here.
Computational Analysis of Technical Systems (CATS) at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany, use finite element analysis (FEA) techniques using Apple Xserve clusters and Mac desktops using EnSight post-processing software to analyze the results. CATS engineers are working on a titanium tube approximately one inch in diameter by three inches long. A tiny, four-ounce pump, whose design is being continuously refined with the help of Apple and CEI technology, is capable of keeping a cardiac patient alive by pumping 300 liters of blood an hour. The device pumps steadily, without a pulse. For the full story, click here.
Examples
CFD, Visualization Software Help Rice Study Ways to Make Better Heart Pumps, riceu.pdf
Image shows how researchers at University Hospital Freiburg in southwestern Germany are using magnetic resonance scans in combination with EnSight visualizations to analyze blood-flow characteristics, in the hopes of improving the diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening conditions such as aneurysms.
For the full story on the University Hospital in Freiburg, click here.
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