Articles techniques et présentations

Atherosclerosis in arteries is caused by the formation of stenosis : fatty depositions, on the artery wall. In current medicine, the practice is to observe the maximum percentage occlusion at any arbitrary cross-section and diagnose the patient on that basis, which might not always present the real picture due to non-uniformity of the stenosis thickness. The present work attempts to simulate the blood flow using computational methodology (employing standard FEM based software package COMSOL) and study the changes in its flow pattern, in respect to its velocity profile, pressure drop and other parameters. Our results suggest that with the increase in the length of the plaque deposition, the flow pattern changes. With a larger deposition zone (higher length of the plaque) flow reversal occurs in a predominant way. However with number of smaller plaques introduced with same length, the pattern is totally different. The results denote that diagnosis of stenosis should involve a detailed analysis (with sufficient number of cross sectional views) along the length of the plaque.