Copyright © 2012 Alvaro Valencia et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of different solid models on predictions of brain shift for three craniotomies. We created a generic 3D brain model based on healthy human brain and modeled the brain parenchyma as single continuum and constrained by a practically rigid skull. We have used elastic model, hyperelastic 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Ogden models, and hyperelastic Mooney-Rivlin with 2- and 5-parameter models. A pressure on the brain surface at craniotomy region was applied to load the model. The models were solved with the finite elements package ANSYS. The predictions on stress and displacements were compared for three different craniotomies. The difference between the predictions of elastic solid model and a hyperelastic Ogden solid model of maximum brain displacement and maximum effective stress is relevant.