WEBINAR
Simulating airflow in dynamic airway models: toward a deeper understanding of airway collapse
by Alister Bates, Antoon Dierckx, Javier Garriz
The road to developing meaningful, innovative solutions to improve patient care and clinical outcomes typically starts with the pursuit of a deep understanding of a particular disease. During this webinar, Alister Bates, PhD, will discuss how he applies Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate airflow in the upper/central airways while they are moving. To make these simulations match the reality as close as possible, anatomical models are created based on dynamic CT/MRI scans of real-life patients.
Looking ahead, this novel simulation work has the potential to better equip clinicians in diagnosing and selecting the right treatment for e.g. patients with sleep apnea, or infants suffering from tracheomalacia.
Attendees will:
- How to convert dynamic CT/MRI images into an accurate 3D model of complex, thin anatomies (like the upper airways)
- How to apply CFD to create a simulation on moving 3D anatomical models
- How realistic airflow modeling brings potential value to the future diagnostics and treatment selection for respiratory diseases
Javier Garriz
In over 20 years of working in high-technology and related fields, Javier has held roles in aerospace research, software development, medical device development, technical training, technical sales, and product management, in organizations ranging from small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. In his most recent role prior to joining Siemens, Javier led the product management efforts of a small team of engineers and scientists who took a first-of-its-kind medical device from the prototype stage through to FDA clearance and production-readiness.
Javier joined Siemens in 2016, and has been serving as marketing manager for the Simcenter Energy and Medical Device campaigns in the Simulation & Test Solutions business segment. Javier holds Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Aerospace Engineering, with an emphasis in Computational Fluid Dynamics, from the University of Alabama.
Antoon Dierckx
Innovation Manager - Materialise Medical
Alister Bates
Alister Bates, PhD is an instructor in the Division of Pulmonary Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Alister’s research focuses on the human airways and how they are altered under various disease conditions. Currently he is researching airway behavior in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in children and tracheomalacia (TM) in babies born premature and with congenital abnormalities.
The goals are to characterize how airway problems affect patients’ symptoms, to inform and evaluate surgical and/or therapeutic interventions, and to separate the effect of airway abnormalities from lung disease.
This research is based on patient-specific computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of human respiration based on magnetic resonance images (MRI). Alister obtained his PhD from Imperial College London under Professors Denis Doorly and Bob Schroter, and his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Cambridge.