title: A mathematical description of blood spiral flow in vessels: application to a numerical study of flow in arterial bending.
abstract: Local arterial haemodynamics has been associated with the pathophysiology of several cardiovascular diseases. The stable spiral blood-flows that were observed in vivo in several vessels, may play a dual role in vascular haemodynamics, beneficial since it induces stability, reducing turbulence in the arterial tree, and accounts for normal organ perfusion, but detrimental in view of the imparted tangential velocities that are involved in plaque formation and development. Being a spiral flow considered representative of the local blood dynamics in certain vessels, a method is proposed to quantify the spiral structure of blood flow. The proposed function, computed along a cluster of particle trajectories, has been tested for the quantitative determination of the spiral blood flow in a three-dimensional, s-shaped femoral artery numerical model in which three degrees of stenosis were simulated in a site prone to atherosclerotic development. Our results confirm the efficacy of the Lagrangian analysis as a tool for vascular blood dynamics investigation. The proposed method quantified spiral motion, and revealed the progression in the degree of stenosis, in the presented case study. In the future, it could be used as a synthetic tool to approach specific clinical complications.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Biomedical Engineering, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161, Rome, Italy. grigioni@iss.it
authors.forename: Mauro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grigioni
authors.forename: Carla
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Daniele
authors.forename: Umberto
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Morbiducci
authors.forename: Costantino
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Del Gaudio
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: D'Avenio
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Balducci
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Barbaro
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001157:Arterial Occlusive Diseases / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001783:Blood Flow Velocity; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003251:Constriction, Pathologic; D005263:Femoral Artery / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D011673:Pulsatile Flow