Abstract
Atherosclerosis tends to occur at specific sites, including the bifurcation of arteries. An arterial bifurcation has a sharp edge, and therefore a minute deformation or movement can have a strong effect on the blood flow. In order to study the blood flow at bifurcations using a realistic CFD model, the geometry of a three-dimensional blood vessel configuration was reconstructed by cutting the vessel into slices of order of 1 micrometer. A precise CFD model and an experimental flow model were successfully constructed from the obtained data set, using a computer graphics technique and a rapid prototyping method.
