Blood flow patterns in an anatomically realistic coronary vessel: influence of three different reconstruction methods.

Many clinical studies suggest that local blood flow patterns are involved in the location and development of atherosclerosis. In coronary diseases, this assumption should be corroborated by quantitative information on local hemodynamic parameters such as pressure, velocity or wall shear stress. Nowadays, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) algorithms coupled to realistic 3-D reconstructions of such vessels make these data accessible.