Research

Computational modeling of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) involves segmenting 2D orthogonal CT slices of AAAs and reconstructing 3D vessel and thrombus geometry from these segmented images. Finite element analysis (FEA) is then used to simulate mechanical wall stress and/or fluid flow through the vessel. Currently, segmentation is done semi-automatically to produce a stack of inner and outer contours. These contours are then skinned to produce two surfaces from which a 3D vessel wall and thrombus, including iliac bifurcation, are constructed. The lofting process is problematic because of the bifurcation geometry. Each surface is currently slit into four pieces that are patched together by hand. Discontinuous seams cause many problems in the subsequent meshing and FEA. My project is to write a program to create an ideal representation of the bifurcation using either NURBS (non-uniform rational b-splines) or subdivision surfaces and deform it to match the shape of the actual AAA.

RAMS Program