ESSIM 2012 - European Summer School in Industrial Mathematics and Modeling Week

Mathematical Models and Simulation of the Human Cardiovascular System:

The use of mathematical models and numerical simulations to study blood flow in the circulatory system and related pathologies is an active interdisciplinary field of research. It constitutes an inexpensive and non invasive tool, providing information difficult to obtain in vivo and easily allowing the analysis of different scenarios, for instance in surgery planning. Due to the complexity of the human cardiovascular system, the use of computational models and simulation to study blood circulation in healthy and pathological situations is a challenge to mathematicians and engineers. Nevertheless, the enormous advances in this field in the last decade make it nowadays a reliable tool which is increasingly used in clinical applications, such as the placement of stents in arteries with atherosclerotic plaques, or the understanding of aneurysm growth and rupture. 

In this course some of the fundamental aspects of mathematical modeling and numerical analysis and simulation of blood flow in the human cardiovascular system will be introduced and described. The main challenges, such as the use o patient-specific geometrical models and accounting for the global circulation in local simulations, will be addressed.

Modelling week: What are the effects of anatomical changes in the human arterial system?