- Towards to the noninvasive simulation of cardiovascular blood flow-

Abstract. Blood dynamics in cardiovascular system involve length scales in vastly different ranges, entailing dimensions from cell surface receptors on the nm order up to large arteries with cm length. Hemodynamics is of multi-scale physical phenomena but conventional theories are mostly established at the individual levels of scale. Multi-scale method can break the whole work into individual but interactive domains, making the approach practical and promising for tackling the vast scale present in hemodynamics. We have developed a multi-scale, computational method that is able to predict blood flow and pressure in the systematic arteries at any position along the vessels and to compute local flow patterns as well as wall shear stresses at any point in any vessel or organ. A one-dimensional model is established on a basis of the axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations for flow and pressure propagation in compliant and tapering vessels. The three-dimensional model is utilized for specific vessel or organ, which is an in-house solver for the full Navier-Stokes equations and is embedded into the one-dimensional network model for the systematic arteries. Results are presented for a comprehensive study on blood flow in a human aortic arch and demonstrate that the multi-scale computation in hemodynamics provides a noninvasive simulation-based tool for medical applications. 1