Huidan (Whitney) Yu
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Surgery Division of Vascular Surgery, School of Medicine, Indiana University
Thursday, February 4, 2016
2:00pm
800 22nd Street NW, SEH B1220
Washington, DC 20052
Hosted by: Dr. Michael Plesniak ([email protected])
Abstract
Patient-specific blood flow simulation in human arteries has emerged as a powerful research tool to noninvasively quantify unsteady flow and pressure inside the vessel and wall shear stress (WSS) distribution on inner wall. The attractive advantages include (1) the low cost of facility, personnel, and supplies; (2) the fully human subject protection; (3) the amenability to perform parametric analysis, and (4) the direct human subject results. Radiological scanning and animal model experimentation cannot compete with these advantages to achieve similar results with the same investment. We have recently developed a unique computational platform for patient-specific computational hemodynamics (PSCH) based on clinical CT/MRI imaging information through unified mesoscale modeling using lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) for both image processing and fluid dynamics together with the emerging GPU (graphic processing unit) parallel computing technology. The PSCH computational tool, named as InVascular, is featured with easy implementation and fast computation. The LBM solves a level set equation for image segmentation from CT or MRI imaging data and extracts the boundary information. The obtained patient-specific vessel geometry, volumetric ratio of solid versus fluid, and the orientation of the boundary are then seamlessly fed to the next step for solving unsteady pulsatile flow. From CT/MARI images to in vivo flow, pressure, and WSS quantification, there are no data transformation and software involved thus the computation can be efficiently accelerated by GPU technology. It has been estimated that a typical cardiac simulation of blood flow in a human artery can be completed within 30 minutes. This talk is about the computational methodology, validation, and an application of noninvasive assessment of renal stenosis severity for determining whether or not a tenting therapy can benefit the patient.
Biography
Dr. Whitney Yu is currently an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering Department of IUPUI. Prior to this position, she successively completed two PhD degrees in Physics at Peking University in China and in Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University in USA, followed by two postdoctoral research positions at Los Alamos National laboratory and the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Yu’s research interest and expertise is on kinetic based lattice Boltzmann method for modeling, simulation, and parametric analysis of complex flows in which complicated geometry, multiphase, fluid-structure interaction, etc. might be involved. In recent years, Dr. Yu has dedicated herself to develop reliable and applicable computational tools for image-based computation and numerical analysis of flows. One is named InVascular for noninvasive assessment of hemodynamic abnormalities based on patient’s CT/MRI image information; another is called InPore for pore-scale flow in imaged porous media. Her research projects are supported by NSF, IU Health, Boston Scientific, and OVCR of IUPUI