Comparison of steady-state and transient blood flow simulations of intracranial aneurysms

Hemodynamics play an important role in the pathogenesis of intracranial aneurysms and patient-specific computational hemodynamic simulations could provide valuable information to clinicians. Transient simulations that capture the pulsatility of blood flow are commonly used for research purposes. However, steady-state simulations might provide enough information at a lower computational cost, which could help facilitate the introduction of hemodynamic simulations into clinical practice. In this study, we compared steady-state simulations to transient simulations for two aneurysms. The effect of a change in flow rate waveform was investigated and virtual treatment techniques were employed to compare post-treatment flow reduction predictions. We found that the difference in the time-averaged wall shear stress on the aneurysm was less than 5% and the distribution of wall shear stress was qualitatively assessed to be very similar.