Virtual Imaging and Visualization of Blood Flow Dynamics

心脏病发作和中风是由扰乱或被扰乱血液流动模式的心血管疾病引起的。这些血流模式很难在患者身上直接成像或测量，这可能使医生更难正确诊断和治疗这些疾病。我们的研究试图通过医学成像和计算流体动力学（CFD）的集成来克服这一点。我们开发的医学成像模拟是一个重要的组成部分，它使我们能够了解血流紊乱如何改变我们的CFD模型所依赖的临床图像中的动脉和血流外观。

Heart attacks and strokes are caused by cardiovascular diseases that disturb, or are disturbed by, blood flow patterns. These flow patterns are difficult to image or measure directly in patients, which can make it harder for doctors to properly diagnosis and treat these diseases. Our research has sought to overcome this via the integration of medical imaging and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). An essential ingredient has been our development of medical imaging simulations, which allow us to understand how disturbed flow can alter the appearance of arteries and blood flow in the clinical images that we rely on for our CFD models. With the support of NSERC, we have developed new ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) simulation techniques that are both fast and realistic (unlike other approaches, which tend to be one or the other). This allows us to now consider new ways of detecting and correcting for distortions in cardiovascular imaging and modelling, which could ultimately see their way into medical imaging scanners or analysis workstations. Specifically, we will focus on two important problems that have plagued our and others' research: accurate measurement of blood velocities and flow rates by Doppler ultrasound; and automated measurement of blood vessel shape and size from MRI. At the same time, through our collaborations with radiologists and surgeons we have learned that the blood flow visualizations typically provided to them are less interactive or more detailed than they need, making it difficult for them to "see the forest for the trees". Building upon ideas from our medical imaging simulation work, we will develop a new approach for storing and retrieving complex blood flow datasets to allow for real-time interaction; and we will merge principles of fluid mechanics and the graphic arts to highlight only the most relevant flow patterns.