Describing the early stage development of an Intracranical Saccular Aneurysm (ICA): modeling and numerical features

Cardiovascular diseases represent the major causes of death in developed countries. This family of diseases involve both dysfunctions (or illnesses) of the heart and the circulatory system. Intracranical Saccular Aneurysm is a specific type of arterial aneurysm, that is a focal dilatation of the vascular wall. It usually develops at the apex of a bifurcation in or near the circle of Willis. The goal of this research is to find a suitable model to describe the early stage development of an ICA and to implement it in a finite element library. Moreover, the effects of hemodynamics will also be studied using appropriate models for the blood and fluid-structure interaction (FSI) algorithms. This talk focuses on the mathematical models developed in literature to describe the mechanical response of the arterial wall and in particular on the cerebral arterial wall models. The finite element library used to run FSI simulations and to implement the models will also be described.