@neurIST Project Demonstrates Aneurysm Simulation Using ANSYS Software

By DE Editors

Imagecourtesy of ANSYS, Inc.

ANSYS, Inc. announced that the @neurIST project has completed a major milestone toward its goal of helping clinicians understand and manage cerebral aneurysms. The project teamed with ANSYS to incorporate high-end engineering simulation, which is being increasingly used in the fields of biomedicine and healthcare.

The @neurIST project successfully demonstrated its underlying series of linked tools — called a “toolchain” — using software from ANSYS, which automates complex tasks such as aneurysm modeling and simulation. The project is now moving toward developing patient-specific treatment for this devastating condition.

An aneurysm is the ballooning of a weakened artery wall (with cerebral aneurysm occurring in the brain), with the constant threat that it may burst, leading to uncontrolled bleeding and often death. Ultimately, the @neurIST project expects to provide individualized aneurysm rupture predictions. The toolchain is a critical part of the project’s infrastructure: It combines diverse, independent tools into an integrated suite, in which the output of one tool becomes the input for the next. The resulting automated workflow brings together multiple strands of patient data — including CT scans, X-rays, angiograms, and other routine test results — transforming them into 3-D representations that are the basis for dynamic simulations performed with ANSYS software. The resulting information can be used in other @neurIST software systems by doctors, researchers and engineers at hospitals, universities, and medical device companies to develop patient-specific treatments. Project partners are now collecting and analyzing clinical data in expectation of developing best practices and, perhaps, identifying the underlying causes of the condition.

“There is a demonstrated need for the use of computer-based imaging and monitoring not just to diagnose disease, but also for patient-specific simulations to test alternative treatments,” says Jim Cashman, president and chief executive officer at ANSYS, Inc. “@neurIST is a comprehensive example of this. It fuses diagnostic, modeling and simulation data into a coherent representation of a patient's condition. ANSYS is at the foundation of the project because of our commitment to advancing the use of engineering simulation in new and innovative applications — things that previously were never imagined. The company has long served the biomedical industry with leading-edge technology that enables advances in solving unique and complex problems.”

For more information, visit ANSYS and @neurIST.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.