A spatio-temporal model for spontaneous thrombus formation in cerebral aneurysms

•New model numerical for thrombosis formation in cerebral aneurysms.•Stop of the thrombosis process is an emergent process.•Low shear-stress threshold for thrombosis initiation validated through an in vitro experiment.•Application on two spontaneous thrombosis cases.

We propose a new numerical model to describe thrombus formation in cerebral aneurysms. This model combines CFD simulations with a set of bio-mechanical processes identified as being the most important to describe the phenomena at a large space and time scales. The hypotheses of the model are based on in vitro experiments and clinical observations. We document that we can reproduce very well the shape and volume of patient specific thrombus segmented in giant aneurysms.