Establishment of the intracranial hemodynamic model based on contrast medium and clinical applications

Ischemic cerebrovascular diseases are one of the most common vascular diseases in aged people and CT perfusion (CTP) is a very popular tool to detect the ischemic changes in brain vascular. The present study aims to establish a novel intracranial hemodynamic model to simulate anterior cerebral artery blood flow, and compare the actual and simulated hemodynamic parameters of healthy people and patients with carotid stenosis or occlusion. A mathematical model of the intracranial hemodynamic was generated using MATLAB software, and data from patients with or without infarct disease (57 and 44 cases, respectively) were retrospectively collected to test the new model. The actual time-density curve (TDC) of anterior cerebral artery was obtained from the original intracranial CTP data, and simulated TDC was calculated from our intracranial hemodynamic model. All model parameters were adjusted according to patients’ sex, height, and weight. Time to peak enhancement (TTP), maximum enhancement (ME), and mean transit time (MTT) were selected to evaluate the status of hemodynamics. In healthy people, there were no significant differences of TTP and ME between actual and simulated curves. For patients with infarct symptoms, ME was significantly decreased in actual data compared with simulated curve, while there was no obvious difference of TTP between actual and simulated data. Moreover, MTT was delayed in infarct patients compared with healthy people. Our group generated a computer-based, physiologic model to simulate intracranial hemodynamics. The model successfully simulated anterior cerebral artery hemodynamics in normal healthy people and showed noncompliant ME and MTT in infarct patients, reflecting their abnormal cerebral hemodynamic status. The digital model is reliable and may help optimize the protocol of contrast medium enhancement in intracranial CT, and provide a solid tool to study intracranial hemodynamics.