Virtual Imaging and Visualization of Blood Flow Dynamics

心脏病发作和中风是由扰乱血流模式或受血流模式干扰的心血管疾病引起的。这些血流模式很难在患者体内直接成像或测量，这可能会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。其中一个关键因素是我们开发的医学成像模拟，它使我们能够了解扰动流动如何改变我们CFD模型所依赖的临床图像中的动脉和血液流动的外观。 在NSERC的支持下，我们开发了新的超声和磁共振成像(MRI)模拟技术，这些技术既快速又逼真(不同于其他方法，它们往往是其中之一)。这使我们现在可以考虑新的方法来检测和纠正心血管成像和建模中的扭曲，最终可能会进入医学成像扫描仪或分析工作站。具体地说，我们将专注于困扰我们和其他人研究的两个重要问题：通过多普勒超声准确测量血流速度和流速；以及通过MRI自动测量血管形状和大小。 与此同时，通过我们与放射科医生和外科医生的合作，我们了解到，通常提供给他们的血液流动可视化比他们需要的互动更少或更详细，这使得他们很难“只见树木不见森林”。根据我们的医学成像模拟工作的想法，我们将开发一种新的方法来存储和检索复杂的血流数据集，以实现实时交互；我们将融合流体力学和图形艺术的原理，仅突出最相关的血流模式。

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.