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Particle-based simulation and machine learning of thrombus formation models in brain circulation

Academic lead
Dr Toni Lassila, School of Computing, t.lassila@leeds.ac.uk
Co-supervisor(s)
Dr Amirul Khan, School of Civil Engineering, a.khan@leeds.ac.uk, Prof Tufail Patankar, School of Medicine and NHS Leeds Teaching Hospitals, tufail.patankar@nhs.net
Project themes
Biomedical Flows

A brain aneurysm is a life-threatening vascular distension of blood vessels. Common treatments for aneurysms involve a stent or a coil that aims to redirect blood flow away from the aneurysm. This triggers blood clotting and causes the aneurysm to heal and eliminates it from circulation. Computer simulations of the clot formation process can assist in the treatment-planning and design of new interventions for brain aneurysms.

Clot formation in human blood is complex, and its effects on brain aneurysms are still not fully understood. In this project, mathematical models for blood clotting will be coupled with three-dimensional blood flow models to make patient-specific predictions of how the clot will develop after the intervention and to predict its stability. The project will focus on: (i) modelling platelet cells as computational particles to better understand how they respond to shear stresses and (ii) acceleration of the computational simulations with physics-informed neural networks coupled with the particle-resolved flow field to make predictions of the final clot shape and its stability that are crucial in understanding when a particular treatment is likely to succeed.

Figure 1: Virtual treatment planning model for flow diversion in cerebral, analysis of post-treatment clotting in two different flow scenarios (courtesy of Dr Ali Sarrami-Foroushani) 

 References: 

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