Abstract
BACKGROUND: Hemodynamics is fundamental to understanding cardiovascular physiology and pathology, with parameters such as blood flow velocity, vascular resistance, pressure, and wall shear stress (WSS) serving as critical indicators of vascular health. Although computed tomography angiography-based computational fluid dynamics (CTA-CFD) has advanced human and livestock studies, its application in poultry remains limited by species-specific traits and methodological constraints, leaving dynamic functional insights underexplored. METHOD: This study applied CTA-CFD to establish a non-invasive framework for poultry hemodynamic evaluation. A healthy rooster was scanned using high-resolution CTA, and three-dimensional vascular reconstructions were generated for CFD simulations of blood flow velocity, pressure distribution, and WSS under normal and heat stress conditions. RESULT: The results demonstrated that the poultry aorta exhibits a tapering geometry that accelerates blood flow and optimizes energy allocation to major branches. Under physiological conditions, spatially patterned WSS supported endothelial stability, whereas heat stress induced marked increases in velocity and pressure gradients, with high-WSS regions expanding by 148 %. Extreme WSS values disrupted endothelial integrity, triggered inflammatory signaling, and initiated systemic inflammatory response syndrome, thereby increasing the risk of thrombosis, organ dysfunction, and mortality. CONCLUSION: This work represents the first application of CTA-CFD in poultry, providing methodological innovation, mechanistic insights into heat stress-induced vascular injury, and a theoretical foundation for early detection, precision breeding, and comparative cardiovascular modeling relevant to human medicine.