A method for subject specific estimation of aortic wall shear stress

Wall shear stress (WSS) distribution in the human aorta is a highly interesting hemodynamic factor for atherosclerosis development. We present a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based subject specific WSS estimation method and demonstrate it on a group of nine healthy volunteers (males age 23.6 ± 1.3 years). In all nine subjects, the aortic blood flow was simulated in a subject specific way, where the 3D segmented geometries and inflow profiles were obtained using MRI. No parameter settings were tailored using data from the nine subjects. Validation was performed by comparing CFD gained velocity with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) velocity measurements. CFD and MRI velocity profiles were comparable, but the temporal variations of the differences during the cardiac cycle were significant. Spatio-temporal analyzes on the WSS distribution showed a strong subject specific influence. Subject specific models are decisive to estimate WSS distribution.