In addition to the investigation of the role of hemodynamic factors in vascular adaptation and disease and the design of cardiovascular devices,computer simulation technology can also be applied to the planning of medical treatments, e.g. the design of vascular reconstructions to provide improved blood flow and reduce pressure losses [75]. These techniques can be performed based on average, idealized, models as in Lei et al. [33] who applied computational methods to the design of end-to-side anastomoses. Alternatively, these methods can be applied to an individual using patient-specific models. As applied to an individual patient, a physician would use diagnostic data to reconstruct a model of an individual’s vascular anatomy and physiology, and then use simulation techniques to predict the response of that patient to alternative treatments.
Image segmentation and image-based geometric modeling techniques can be used to construct patient-specific anatomic models from 3D imaging techniques including CT and MRI [68, 47, 48, 76, 77]. Patient specific physiologic data is also needed and involves extracting flow data to
define the preoperative conditions. MRI can potentially be used to define preoperative conditions, but the definition of postoperative conditions requires a representation of the preoperative resistance or impedance of the vascular bed. Once the patient-specific model is created, the predictions of the consequences of treatments requires the simulation of blood flow using techniques from computational fluid dynamics in models which reflect the proposed treatments.