Developing a numerical swallowing simulation

Abstract

A simulation of a healthy human swallow has been developed with the aim of improving the diagnosis and treatment of Oropharyngeal Dysphagia. Additionally, there is a strong emphasis on automating the diagnosis process. To facilitate this, an automatic method to segment the bolus using CT scans has been developed alongside a morpher which increases the temporal resolution of the dataset. Two numerical methods, STARCCM+ and Moving Particle Semi-Implicit (MPS), are employed to analyse the data and provide meaningful numerical data (i.e. pressure, velocity) to doctors. Important results, such as the volume fractions of the bolus, are derived which provides doctors with key information on the chance of aspiration; these data have been previously unavailable using current diagnosis methods.

Date of Award	12 Sept 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol