Analysis and Visualisation of Scanned Blood Flow Fields
Members of the project team
Research objectives
Medical scanners, like CT- and MR-scanners, are being routinely
used in many hospitals today. Typically, they produce large amounts of
scalar data with each data point containing a single number indicative
of motion (as in MR Angiography) or of the type of tissue (e.g. bone)
present at that location. MR scanners can also be used to scan (blood)
flow fields, in which case each data point contains a flow vector. The
objective of this project is to develop tools to analyse and visualise
these data. Most of the existing flow visualisation tools were developed
to analyse numerically generated data and appear not be really suited
to be used on scanned flow data.
Because the spatial resolution of the MR blood flow data is
somewhat too limited to analyse local flow structures, such as vortices,
we investigate how these data can be of use in a segmentation
process (the determination of positions, lengths and diameters of vessels).
The target object is the socalled `Circle of Willis', a ring-like vessel
structure that redistributes the blood supplied by four arteries to the
various parts of the brain. A numerical model of the Circle of Willis
has been developed at Utrecht University.
A (more) accurate
determination of a patient's vessel parameters and vessel fluxes would
allow the clinical application of the model: a surgeon might e.g. use it
to investigate the effect an intended bypass operation might have.
Collaborations
- Philips Medical Systems (Best, The Netherlands)
- technical support
- supply of MR blood flow data
- Prof. Dr. B. Hillen,
Department of Functional Anatomy,
Utrecht University
(Utrecht, The Netherlands)
- medical support
- numerical model Circle of Willis
Timetable
Starting date: March 1992;
Ending date: March 1996.
Intended results, deliverables
Ph.D. thesis
Recent publications:
Last modified on July 2, 1996 by Lex Wolters.