An Integrated Statistical Investigation of Internal Carotid Arteries of Patients Affected by Cerebral Aneurysms

Cerebral aneurysm formation is the result of a complex interplay of systemic and local factors. Among the latter, the role of the geometry of the vessel hosting an aneurysm, of the upstream vasculature and the induced hemodynamics still need to be carefully investigated. In this paper we combine computational fluid dynamics analysis and morphological characterization and carry out the statistical investigation of the features of the internal carotid artery (ICA) of 52 patients affected by a cerebral aneurysm. The functional principal component analysis performed on the geometric and fluid dynamics features of the patients reveals correlations with the location of the aneurysm in the cerebral circulation and its rupture status. This allows a clustering of the patients that is anticipated to contribute to the design of an index for the rupture risk. In particular, ICA featuring a pronounced WSS peak are statistically inclined to hosting ruptured aneurysms. Moreover, our statistical results suggest that patients with a double-bend siphons (S-class) are less prone to the development of cerebral aneurysms.