By Ashim Khadka
My research project was based on “Atherosclerosis” one of the key issues that developed countries are trying to cope with. It has been suggested that 1/3 of the people are diagnosed with this disease in the USA and it is expected to cost healthcare providers three times more than the current cost of $270 million by 2030.
During my research our main goal was to validate the physics of the artery model (with LDL deposition) with the mathematical discretised software, ANSYS FLUENT. Our main motive was to observe the wall shear stress around the stenosis region and to analyse how it varies between arteries with rigid and deforming walls. One of the key areas for the project was to understand which region is most critical when the blood passes through the plague region.
My research will increase the ability of medical practitioners to predict the evolution of atherosclerotic lesions over years while having computational costs of only days. This will give the practitioner the ability to assess disease severity in affected patients on a patient-specific basis and hence the capability to make scientifically educated decisions regarding proposed actions such as surgery.
I did computational fluid dynamics as a part of my engineering electives, which gave me the opportunity to use the CFD software to analyse the fluid flow externally and internally. I developed a keen interest in understanding the maths that the software is discretised from. By doing this project it has helped me to study the details involved in the computer program.
Ashim Khadka was one of the recipients of a 2013/14 AMSI Vacation Research Scholarship.