Abstract TMP29: Prediction of Wall-thinning Area in Unruptured Intracerebral Aneurysms by Computational Fluid Dynamics
[Background and purpose] During a clipping surgery, an unruptured intracerebral aneurysm often presented a spatially-localized red-colored "wall-thinning" area. The wall thinning was believed to be related with the risk of rupture. The present aim is given to investigate the predictability of a wall thinning area using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). [Method] We chose 16 unruptured aneurysms (12 MCA, 4 ICA) with clipping surgery and 24 wall-thinning areas were detected from the operation video. CFD study was carried out using patient-specific angiographic data. The wall shear stress (WSS) and the wall pressure were evaluated. [Results] The WSS magnitude was found to be uncorrelated with wall thinning. On the other hand, 20 wall-thinning areas (83%) exhibited a presence of “flow impingement”, which was defined to give the spatial variation of the WSS vector to be divergent with the local elevation of the wall pressure. From CFD, 27 flow impingements were detected and classified according to the degree of divergence. Seven impingements are full-divergent and all of them (100%) are located in the wall thinning areas. The remaining 20 impingements were partial-divergent and 13 impingements of them (65%) were located in the wall thinning areas. A classification of full-/partial-divergent flow impingement was statistically significant for the prediction of wall-thinning areas (P<0.01). [Conclusions] The full-divergent flow impingement was found to be a reliable predictor of the wall thinning area in unruptured intracerebral aneurysms. The present results demonstrated the malignant nature of flow impingement for promoting the thinning of aneurysmal walls.