Beyond the Virtual Intracranial Stenting Challenge 2007: non-Newtonian and flow pulsatility effects

Three models of stented cerebral aneurysms, originating from the VirtualIntracranial Stenting Challenge 2007 (visc'07), are meshed and the owcharacteristics simulated using commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics(cfd) software. Following views expressed in the literature and consistentwith the recommendations of a report, the eects of non-Newtonian viscos-ity and pulsatile ow are implemented. Conventional graphical Wall ShearStress (wss) output and basic summary measures of wss are normally usedas a qualitative means of comparing the cfd simulations. Herein a quan-titative measure of stent performance using wss distribution is presented,which clearly discriminates in favour of the stent design identied by theother groups in the report and provides a more informative comparison. Weconclude that non-Newtonian and pulsatile eects are important to includein order to avoid underestimating wss and to discriminate more eectivelybetween stent designs.