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Faculty Directory
Francis Loth B.S., Aerospace Engineering (1984) M.S., Aerospace Engineering (1988) M.S., Ph.D., Mechanical Eng. (1990, 1993)
Selected Publications T. J. Royston, Y. Yazicioglu, F. Loth, “Surface response of a viscoelastic medium to subsurface acoustic sources with application to medical diagnosis,” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol.113, No. 2, pp. 1109-1121, February 2003. F. Loth, P.F. Fischer, N. Arslan, C.D. Bertram, S.E. Lee, T.J. Royston, W.E. Shaalan, H.S. Bassiouny, “Transitional flow at the venous anastomosis of an arteriovenous graft: Potential activation of the ERK1/2 mechanotransduction pathway,” Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, Vol. 125, pp. 49-61, February 2003. M.A. Curi, C.L. Skelly, C. Quint, D.H. Woo, S.L. Meyerson, A.J. Farmer, U.M. Shakur, F. Loth, L.B. Schwartz, “Longitudinal impedance is independent of outflow resistance,” Journal of Surgical Research, Vol. 108, No. 2, pp. 191-197, December 2002. P.F. Fischer, G.W. Kruse, F. Loth, "Spectral element methods for transitional flows" Journal of Scientific Computing Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 81-98, December 2002. F. Loth, S.A. Jones, C.K. Zarins, D.P. Giddens, S. Glagov, H.S. Bassiouny, "Relative contribution of wall shear stress and injury in experimental intimal thickening at PTFE end-to-side arterial anastomoses," Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, Vol. 124, No. 1, pp. 44-51, February 2002. Research Interests Dr. Loth's major interest is in the fluid mechanics of blood and its relationship with disease. During the past two decades, fluid mechanics have become appreciated by medical and biological investigators as a key factor in both the cause of arterial disease and the regulation of cellular biology in both normal and diseased arteries. The ability to model biological flow-systems experimentally and numerically has become an important component to fundamental research of vascular disease. A better understanding of the distribution of fluid dynamic variables for various arterial geometry and flow conditions is of great interest to both medical researchers and bioengineers. Measurement of detailed velocity profiles in vivo is difficult due to the small size of the vessels. Hence, wall shear stress values cannot be estimated accurately from a near wall velocity gradient measured in vivo. Therefore, researchers have used in vitro up-scaled models of the arterial geometry and numerical methods to estimate the wall shear stress distribution. Numerical methods offer the advantage of providing fluid dynamic variables for the entire flow domain once a solution has been obtained. With the increasing speed of computer processors and the development of sophisticated software, one can envision large-scale computational solutions of the blood flow field being used by medical doctors as a diagnostic tool in the future. The major difficulty of numerical solutions occurs for flow fields that are characterized by turbulent flow. Numerical codes will continue to improve and will become an important tool in the diagnosis of disease. However, they require validation by careful experimental measurements inside well-defined geometry for code validation. Dr. Loth is conducting research directed towards determining the fluid dynamics parameters (velocity, turbulence levels, and wall shear stress) which are present in vivo using experimental and numerical techniques. These parameters are correlated with biological information about the disease progression. The overall goal is better understanding of disease for improved treatment and diagnosis. Specific areas of research include: the development of CFD tools to predict blood flow patterns based on MRI measurements, experimental investigation of the importance of turbulence in arterio-venous graft failure, in-vitro investigation of blood pulsatility on platelet adhesion and biocompatibility. Dr. Loth is also investigating the fluid dynamics of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). This fluid resides within cranial and spinal cavities and moves in a pulsatile fashion to and from the cranial cavity. This motion can be measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and may be of clinical importance in the diagnosis of several brain-related disorders such as hydrocephalus, Chiari malformation, and syringomyelia. Laboratory Biofluids
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