From image data to computational domains

The advent of high-resolution imaging systems and powerful computational resources has made it possible to obtain information about the in vivo anatomy of blood vessels in a non invasive way. By employing this information as the domain definition for computational fluid dynamics, it is now possible to model hemodynamics in realistic geometric configurations on a subject-specific basis. Since geometry has a strong influence on hemodynamics, as will shown extensively in Chapter 5, the procedure used to model the geometry of a blood vessel from medical images plays a primary role in determining the reliability of haemodynamic predictions and, ultimately, their clinical significance.