Numerical analysis for the blood flow in a patient-specific ophthalmic artery

In this paper we investigate blood flow in the ophthalmic artery (OA) which is the major artery supplying blood to the eyes. An OA and several other cerebral arteries are digitized from a computed tomography angiography (CTA) image of an aneurysm patient. Utilizing a reduced version (1D) of the governing Navier–Stokes equations we solve the transient flow in these arteries. The flow waveform of the patient–OA is compared with that in a healthy vascular tree, and also with published ultrasonic measurements. We found that hyperemia rather than ischemia occurred in the OA, and we suggest that this was unlikely to be the cause of impaired vision in the patient. A more likely explanation is the compression of the optic nerves caused by the mass of the aneurysm.