Author(s)

Giulio Lorenzini

Abstract

In this paper, the flow disturbance caused by the presence of an intravascular Doppler catheter inside coronary arteries has been studied. Numerical investigations have been carried out on 2-D models of cylindrical blood vessels with a concentric catheter tube. The CFD package CFX 4.1 was used to calculate the flow patterns inside the blood vessels. Computer simulations have been performed for a range of coronary vessel sizes, flow rates and inlet velocity profiles. Predicted results have shown that the propagation of the flow disturbance and its magnitude were greater in larger blood vessels and for higher blood flow rates.

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