This paper presents a thermoregulation finite element model (FEM) to simulate hypothermia procedures for the treatment of encephalopathy hypoxic-ischemia (EHI) in neonates, a dangerous ischemic condition that can cause neurological damages and even death. Therapeutic hypothermia is the only recommended technique to reduce sequels caused by EHI in neonates; intervention with moderate cooling for neural rescue in newborns with hypoxic-ischemic brain injury clinics that cannot currently afford the available expensive equipment and techniques. In this work, we developed a FEM package using isoparametric linear three-dimensional elements which is applied to the solution of the continuum bioheat Pennes equation. Blood temperature changes were considered using a blood pool approach. The results of the FEM model were compared to those obtained through the implementation of a user-defined function (UDF) in the commercial finite volume software FLUENT and validated with experimental tests. Numerical analyses were performed using a three-dimensional mesh based on a complex geometry obtained from MRI scan medical images.
This paper presents a parallel implementation of the finite element method designed for coarsegrain distributed memory architectures. The MPI standard is used for message passing and tests are run on a PC cluster and on an SGI Altix 350. Compressed data structures are employed to store the coefficient matrix and obtain iterative solutions, based on Krylov methods, in a subdomain-by-subdomain approach. Two mesh partitioning schemes are compared: non-overlapping and overlapping. The pros and cons of these partitioning methods are discussed. Numerical examples of symmetric and non-symmetric problems in two and three dimensions are presented.
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