Author: Payel Gangopadhyay
Institution: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: March 2011
Abstract
Treatment of neurological disease has been impeded by limited drug diffusion across the blood-brain barrier. Convection-enhanced delivery is a drug administration method that can be used to treat diseases of the central nervous system by directly injecting a drug into a patient's brain and allowing the drug to circumvent the blood-brain barrier. However, the transport of a drug in a patient's brain following convection-enhanced delivery is often difficult to predict due to the brain's anisotropic properties, which differ according to direction of measurement. Here, we use the software ANSYS to model a patient's brain using MRI data, and apply rigorous mathematical models to predict the mechanism of drug transport in an individual patient's brain. This report provides a detailed discussion of how ANSYS was used to model convection-enhanced drug delivery to the brain, by describing two simulations. The results can be used to assist physicians in designing patient-specific drug administration using convection-enhanced delivery.