Blood flow measurement using a highly filled carbon polymer sandwich sensor and an elasto‐pseudo compressible vascular flow

Abstract

Vascular grafts are widely employed in clinical practice and still pose significant problems of compatibility and longevity, particularly when the prosthesis is to replace arteries of small diameter. Once a graft has been implanted in the vascular tree, there is no easy way of assessing its interactions with the surrounding tissue. Doppler flow probes or some imaging techniques are commonly used to monitor flow velocity in vascular prostheses. It is, however, difficult to monitor a patient's recovery on a continuous basis. Continuous means of measurement can be quite invaluable. This paper presents a high‐carbon filled polymer (HCFP) sensor that is developed for blood flow measurement in vascular grafts. Furthermore, a computational fluid dynamics model of incompressible blood flow in elastic blood vessels is presented.