Guilhem Jean Collier1,
Jim M. Wild1, George Oates2, Yongmann Chung2
1Department
of Cardiovascular Science, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, Yorkshire,
United Kingdom; 2Centre for Scientific Computing, University of
Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom
We demonstrate that phase contrast velocimetry technique can be used to assess velocity maps of fluid flow that mimic breathing conditions of airflow in a geometry model of the upper airways derived from CT data sets. The experiments were done with two hyperplarized gases (helium-3 and xenon-129) and water. The results were compared to computational fluids dynamics simulations performed with the same model. A good agreement was found, specially with H2O, reaching a resolution high enough to obtain flow patterns in the third generations of the lung model.