A stroke of genius

University of Houston engineers are working with neurology specialists on new technology to help identify which brain aneurysms are at highest risk of rupture and could cause a stroke.

Cerebral aneurysms are ballooning weak spots in the wall of a blood vessel in the brain. The goal of the study is to develop a fully integrated computational medical tool that will be useful in helping to select patients for treatment whose aneurysms are most likely to rupture.

Ralph Metcalfe, a mechanical engineering professor at UH and deputy director of the UH biomedical engineering programme, and his graduate student, Aishwarya Mantha, are working on this project with a Methodist Neurological Institute team consisting of interventional neuroradiologists Drs. Charles Strother and Goetz Benndorf, and Christof Karmonik, a researcher.

Using computer simulations of blood flow in realistic geometric models of aneurysms, some blood flow characteristics have been identified that may contribute to aneurysm formation.