Computational study of the microsphere concentration in blood during radioembolization

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics techniques are increasingly used to computer simulate radioembolization, a transcatheter intraarterial treatment for patients with inoperable tumors, and analyze the influence of treatment parameters on the microsphere distribution. Ongoing clinical research studies are exploring the influence of the microsphere density in tumors on the treatment outcome. In this preliminary study, we computationally analyzed the influence of the microsphere concentration in the vial on the microsphere concentration in the blood. A patient-specific case was used to simulate the blood flow and the microsphere transport during three radioembolization procedures in which the only parameter varied was the concentration of microspheres in the vial and the span of injection, resulting in three simulations with the same number of microspheres injected. Results showed that a time-varying microsphere concentration in the blood at the outlets of the computational domain can be analyzed using CFD, and also showed that there was a direct relationship between the variation of microsphere concentration in the vial and the variation of microsphere concentration in the blood. Future research will focus on elucidating the relationship between the microsphere concentration in the vial, the microsphere concentration in the blood, and the final microsphere distribution in the tissue.