INFLUENCE OF BIFURCATION DIAMETER ON THE VERTEBRAL ARTERY ORIGIN STENOSIS: A SIMULATION STUDY OF HEMODYNAMICS

The stenosis at the beginning segment of the vertebral artery accounts for the first risk of stroke in the posterior circulation. The extracranial vertebral arteries, especially the proximal ends, have been considered to be the predilection sites of stenosis or occlusion. From the perspective of hemodynamics, the mechanics of vertebral arteries stenosis is still unclear. In this paper, the formation of atherosclerosis in proximal end was concerned from the aspects of the effect of bifurcation diameter. Different models represent different bifurcation diameter. In order to find correlation between bifurcation diameter and WSS we build different models. Three idealized models with the vertebral artery diameter of 3.6×10−3m (Model A1), 4.0×10−3m (Model A2) and 4.4×10−3m (Model A3) respectively and seven realistic models were analyzed by using computational fluid dynamics tools. The area of low wall shear stress (WSS, < 1.5Pa) in the proximal end of vertebral artery extracted at the peak systole in the ideali...