Experimental and computational methods in cardiovascular fluid mechanics

The characterization of blood flow is important for understanding the function of the cardiovascular system under normal and diseased conditions, designing cardiovascular devices, and diagnosing and treating congenital and acquired cardiovascular disease. Experimental methods, especially magnetic resonance imaging techniques can be used to noninvasively quantify blood flow for diagnosing cardiovascular disease, researching disease mechanisms, and validating assumptions and predictions of mathematical models. Computational methods can be used to simulate blood flow and vessel dynamics, test hypotheses of disease formation under controlled conditions, and evaluate devices that have not yet been built and treatments that have not yet been implemented. In this article we review experimental and computational methods for quantifying blood flow velocity and pressure fields in human arteries. We place particular emphasis on providing an introduction to the physics and applications of magnetic resonance imaging, and surveying lumped parameter, one-dimensional, and three-dimensional numerical methods used to model blood flow.