Visualizing Carotid Blood Flow Simulations for Stroke Prevention

TL;DR

This paper explores how medical flow visualization techniques can improve the assessment of carotid artery stenoses through blood flow simulations, aiding stroke prevention diagnostics.

Contribution

It introduces adapted visualization methods to integrate hemodynamic and morphological data, enhancing clinical interpretation of blood flow simulations.

Findings

Visualization techniques can promote clinical use of blood flow simulations

Enhanced integration of morphological and hemodynamic data

Positive feedback from interdisciplinary evaluation

Abstract

In this work, we investigate how concepts from medical flow visualization can be applied to enhance stroke prevention diagnostics. Our focus lies on carotid stenoses, i.e., local narrowings of the major brain-supplying arteries, which are a frequent cause of stroke. Carotid surgery can reduce the stroke risk associated with stenoses, however, the procedure entails risks itself. Therefore, a thorough assessment of each case is necessary. In routine diagnostics, the morphology and hemodynamics of an afflicted vessel are separately analyzed using angiography and sonography, respectively. Blood flow simulations based on computational fluid dynamics could enable the visual integration of hemodynamic and morphological information and provide a higher resolution on relevant parameters. We identify and abstract the tasks involved in the assessment of stenoses and investigate how clinicians could derive relevant insights from carotid blood flow simulations. We adapt and refine a combination of techniques to facilitate this purpose, integrating spatiotemporal navigation, dimensional reduction, and contextual embedding. We evaluated and discussed our approach with an interdisciplinary group of medical practitioners, fluid simulation and flow visualization researchers. Our initial findings indicate that visualization techniques could promote usage of carotid blood flow simulations in practice.