Jon-Fredrik Nielsen1, Krishna S. Nayak2
1Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; 2Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
In-vivo blood flow is typically assessed by 3D phase-contrast MRI, or by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) calculations. MRI measurements are direct, but offer limited spatio-temporal resolution. Conventional CFD calculations offer "infinite" spatial resolution, but rely on the accuracy of the assumed fluid properties and boundary conditions. We propose a hybrid MRI/CFD approach that integrates low-resolution MRI flow measurements directly into the CFD solver. We show that MR-driven CFD has a regularizing effect on the flow fields obtained with MRI alone, and produces flow patterns that are in better agreement with direct MRI measurements than CFD alone.