Quantitative Evaluation Between Wall Shear Stress and Artery Angle in Three-Dimensional Atherosclerotic Carotid Bifurcation Model

Atherosclerosis is a cardiovascular disease that is affected by wall shear stress (WSS) and blood pressure in the artery such as carotid bifurcation. The exact determinant of this disease is still not fully understood. In this paper, we examined the relationship between the flow parameters and the geometrical variation of artery angle in health and stenotic carotid bifurcation with computational fluid dynamics model. Our data revealed that the WSS at the bifurcation region tends to be higher than other region of the artery. The proportion of high WSS region descended with larger bifurcation angle. The high WSS area in healthy carotid bifurcation decreased more quickly than that in diseased bifurcation. At the degree of 40 degrees and 50 degrees, the difference in high WSS region value was more obvious than other angles. The results suggest that the WSS is influenced by carotid bifurcation angles. This type of knowledge can be used to advance medical treatment of atherosclerosis.