Development of high-quality hexahedral human brain meshes using feature-based multi-block approach

Abstract

The finite element (FE) method is a powerful tool to study brain injury that remains to be a critical health concern. Subject/patient-specific FE brain models have the potential to accurately predict a specific subject/patient's brain responses during computer-assisted surgery or to design subject-specific helmets to prevent brain injury. Unfortunately, efforts required in the development of high-quality hexahedral FE meshes for brain, which consists of complex intracranial surfaces and varying internal structures, are daunting. Using multi-block techniques, an efficient meshing process to develop all-hexahedral FE brain models for an adult and a paediatric brain (3-year old) was demonstrated in this study. Furthermore, the mesh densities could be adjusted at ease using block techniques. Such an advantage can facilitate a mesh convergence study and allows more freedom for choosing an appropriate brain mesh density by balancing available computation power and prediction accuracy. The multi-block meshing approach is recommended to efficiently develop 3D all-hexahedral high-quality models in biomedical community to enhance the acceptance and application of numerical simulations.

Keywords:

• multi-block technique
• hexahedral mesh
• finite element method
• subject-specific model
• patient-specific model
• brain injury

Acknowledgements

The project was supported in part by Global Human Body Models Consortium (GHBMC) and the Science Fund of State Key Laboratory of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for Vehicle Body No. 30815007. We thank Paul Skelton for proofreading.