Validation of Numerical Simulations of Thoracic Aorta Hemodynamics: Comparison with In Vivo Measurements and Stochastic Sensitivity Analysis.

Purpose: Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and 4D-flow magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are synergically used for the simulation and the analysis of the flow in a patient-specific geometry of a healthy thoracic aorta.

Methods: CFD simulations are carried out through the open-source code SimVascular. The MRI data are used, first, to provide patient-specific boundary conditions.