Non-Newtonian blood flow simulation in cerebral aneurysms

Computer simulations play an increasingly important role in the area of medical physics, from fundamental research to patient specific treatment planning. One particular application we address in this paper is the simulation of blood flow in cerebral aneurysms in domains created from medical images. Our focus is on accurately capturing the theology for this type of application, particularly the difference in wall shear stress between Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids. The numerical method applied for our investigation is a performance optimized Lattice Boltzmann solver with a Carreau-Yasucla model to capture non-Newtonian theology. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.