Importance of incorporating systemic cerebroarterial hemodynamics into computational modeling of blood flow in intracranial aneurysm

The importance of properly treating boundary conditions (BCs) in numerical simulation of hemodynamics in intracranial aneurysm (IA) has been increasingly recognized. In this study, we constructed three types of computational model for each IA to investigate how the outcome of numerical simulation is affected by the treatment of BCs. The first type of model (i.e., Type-A model) was obtained by applying 3-D hemodynamic modeling to the entire cerebral arterial network, with its solution being taken as the reference for evaluating the performance of the other two types of model (i.e., Type-B and Type-C models) in which 3-D modeling was confined to the aneurysm region. In addition, patient-specific 1-D models of the cerebral arterial network were developed to provide hemodynamic information for setting the inflow/outflow BCs of the 3-D models. Numerical tests on three IAs revealed that prescribing the outflow BCs of a localized 3-D aneurysm model based on 1-D model-simulated outflow division (i.e., Type-B model) instead of imposing the free outflow BC on all outlets (i.e., Type-C model) helped to improve the fidelity of the simulation of intra-aneurysmal hemodynamics, but could not guarantee a complete reproduction of the reference solution obtained by the Type-A model. Moreover, it was found that the outcome of hemodynamic simulation was more sensitive to the treatment of BCs when an aneurysm was located at arterial bifurcation rather than sidewall. These findings highlight the importance of taking into account systemic cerebroarterial hemodynamics in computational modeling of hemodynamics in IAs, especially those located at bifurcations.