Turbulence Structure Laboratory Tel Aviv University · School of Mechanical Engineering
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Biomedical Fluid Mechanics

Together with our colleagues and medical doctors, we study the fluid dynamics of pulsating, unsteady flows in complex geometries, helping health professionals better understand the effect of fluid motion and fluid-structure interaction in vascular disease, body fluid drainage, and other clinical questions.

We work with aorta flows, TAVI, heart valves, ventricular assist devices, cerebrospinal fluid models, coronary trees, and more. Our specialty is three-dimensional, time-varying flows and Lagrangian tracking, which are especially useful in transparent physical replicas of complex human geometry.

Our most recent project applies 3D-PTV to a transparent phantom model of the left ventricle. The main goal is to relate the wall shear stress on the ventricle wall to the flow patterns we observe, since wall shear stress is a key mechanical signal in cardiac tissue remodeling.

This left-ventricle work uses our real-time, FPGA-accelerated 3D-PTV pipeline, so tracer trajectories and wall-shear-stress estimates can be obtained without long offline processing.

Related videos: LV phantom with fluid tracers using 3D-PTV with real-time video processing on FPGA — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYQXH8keG1M 3D-PTV experiment of an aorta phantom, performed at ETH Zurich — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOGUBYv0r5M

Left-ventricle 3D-PTV rig
Left-ventricle 3D-PTV rig
Transparent phantom flow model
Transparent phantom flow model
Wall shear stress mapping
Wall shear stress mapping
Cardiac flow phantom setup
Cardiac flow phantom setup
Aorta flow model
Aorta flow model
Cerebrospinal fluid flow model
Cerebrospinal fluid flow model
Turbulent flow through arteries
Turbulent flow through arteries

Selected publications

  • Avrahami, I., Kersh, D., Liberzon, A. (2016). Pulsatility Index as a Diagnostic Parameter of Reciprocating Wall Shear Stress Parameters in Physiological Pulsating Waveforms. PLOS ONE.
  • Yeshurun, T., Bar David, Y., Herman, A., Bar-Sheshet, S., Zilberman, R., Bachar, G., Liberzon, A., Segev, G. (2020). A simulation of a medical ventilator with a realistic lungs model. F1000Research.
  • Kogan, I., Korolik, P., Cartier, H., Adhoute, H., Liberzon, A. (2020). In vitro evaluation of aspiration of hyaluronic acid filler with a new saline flushing method. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology.