Annually, 28,000 people in the United States suffer strokes from ruptured intracranial aneurysms. Nearly half of these people will die and many more will have severe neurological deficits requiring long term nursing facility care. The placement of a stent in a cerebral artery across the orifice of an aneurysm has the potential to alter the hemodynamics in such a way as to induce self-thrombosis within the aneurysm sac, stopping its further growth and preventing its rupture. Thus stenting might offer a new, minimally invasive treatment paradigm.
The goal of this project is to obtain a quantitative understanding and characterization of the alterations of the hemodynamic environment within a saccular cerebral aneurysm caused by the placement of an endoluminal stent, a miniature mesh tube implanted in an artery. In some clinical cases, stenting alone has led to the healing of the aneurysms, but in other cases stenting has generated adverse effects resulting in the rupture of the aneurysms. The research will quantify how key parameters of a stent such as porosity, mesh design, and strut thickness and vessel geometry affect the flow conditions. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (SPIV) will be used to evaluate key generic aneurysm geometries and stent geometry alternatives and selected realistic patient specific aneurysm geometries. Results will identify the desirable properties necessary for the development of effective and novel intracranial stents.
