GENIUS

Official Site: http://wiki.realitygrid.org/wiki/GENIUS

We are leading the joint UK/US GENIUS project

Cardiovascular disease is the cause of a large number of deaths in the developed world. Cerebral blood flow behaviour plays a crucial role in the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of the disease; problems are often due to anomalous blood flow behaviour in the neighbourhood of bifurcations and aneurysms within the brain although the details are not well understood. Experimental studies are often impractical owing to the difficulty of measuring behaviour in humans; however, X-ray computer tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging angiography (MRA) do furnish non-invasive static and dynamical data acquisition. Today such imaging methods represent a very important tool for diagnosis of various cardiovascular diseases, together with the design of cardiovascular reconstructions and devices for the enhancement of blood flow.

Notwithstanding these advances in measurement methods, modelling and simulation have a crucial role to play in hemodynamics. There are evident limitations to the experimental methods which can be complemented by simulation. In the GENIUS project, we are concerned with performing brain blood flow simulations in support of clinical neurosurgery. Simulation offers the clinician the possibility of performing non-invasive virtual experiments to plan and study the effects of certain courses of surgical treatment with no danger to the patient, including support for diagnosis, therapy and planning of vascular treatment. The approach offers the prospect of providing clinicians with virtual patient specific analysis and treatment.