A Hierarchical Numerical Journey Through the Nasal Cavity: from Nose-Like Models to Real Anatomies

The immense increase of computational power in the past decades led to an evolution of numerical simulations in all kind of engineering applications. New developments in medical technologies in rhinology employ computational fluid dynamics methods to explore pathologies from a fluid-mechanics point of view. Such methods have grown mature and are about to enter daily clinical use to support doctors in decision making. In light of the importance of effective respiration on patient comfort and health care costs, individualized simulations ultimately have the potential to revolutionize medical diagnosis, drug delivery, and surgery planning. The present article reviews experiments, simulations, and algorithmic approaches developed at RWTH Aachen University that have evolved from fundamental physical analyses using nose-like models to patient-individual analyses based on realistic anatomies and high resolution computations in hierarchical manner.