Quantifying Effects of Artery Shrinkage Using In Vivo MRI-Based 3D FSI Models for Carotid Atherosclerotic Plaques With Bifurcation

Atherosclerotic vascular disease leads to changes of the arterial wall and lumen narrowing, and it is the No.1 killer in the western world. Magnetic resonance image (MRI)-based computational models with fluid-structure interactions (FSI) for atherosclerotic plaques have been introduced to perform mechanical analysis to quantify critical flow and stress/strain conditions related to plaque rupture which often leads directly to heart attack or stroke [2]. There are three groups of information needed as model input: plaque morphology, material properties, and flow conditions. Pre shrinkage-stretch process is used to recover the in vivo geometry from zero-stress state with associated initial conditions which are required to achieve building the computational model. An important issue for this process is how to determine zero stress state from in vivo plaque geometry. However, few publications can be found in the current literature about how to quantify human carotid artery shrinkage.