The intracranial system consists of three main basic components - the brain, theblood and the cerebrospinal fluid. The physiological processes of each of theseindividual components are complex and they are closely related to each other.Understanding them is important to explain the mechanisms behind neurostructuraldisorders such as hydrocephalus.This research project consists of three interrelated studies, which examine themechanical properties of the brain at the macroscopic level, the mechanics of thebrain during hydrocephalus and the study of fluid hydrodynamics in both thenormal and hydrocephalic ventricles. The first of these characterizes the porousproperties of the brain tissues. Results from this study show that the elasticmodulus of the white matter is approximately 350Pa. The permeability of thetissue is similar to what has been previously reported in the literature and is of theorder of 10-12m4/Ns. Information presented here is useful for the computationalmodeling of hydrocephalus using finite element analysis.The second study consists of a three dimensional finite element brain model. Themechanical properties of the brain found from the previous studies were used in theconstruction of this model. Results from this study have implications formechanics behind the neurological dysfunction as observed in the hydrocephalicpatient. Stress fields in the tissues predicted by the model presented in this studyclosely match the distribution of histological damage, focused in the white matter.The last study models the cerebrospinal fluid hydrodynamics in both the normaland abnormal ventricular system. The models created in this study were used tounderstand the pressure in the ventricular compartments. In this study, thehydrodynamic changes that occur in the cerebral ventricular system due torestrictions of the fluid flow at different locations of the cerebral aqueduct weredetermined. Information presented in this study may be important in the design ofmore effective shunts. The pressure that is associated with the fluid flow in theventricles is only of the order of a few Pascals. This suggests that large transmantlepressure gradient may not be present in hydrocephalus.
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