Simulation of Aneurysm Growth With Stepwise Updating of Hemodynamic Loads Using an MRI-Based Geometric Model Available to Purchase

Computer simulations of vascular tissue adaptation under various physiological and pathological conditions have emerged as a new area of research and aided researchers in their understanding of stress-mediated growth and remodeling (G&R) in these structures. With advances in computational biomechanics and biomedical imaging techniques, combinations of these advanced methods will provide promising tools for medical diagnosis and surgical planning in the future (e.g., [1]). Recently Figueroa et al. [2] presented a new computational framework that brings advances in computational biosolid and biofluid mechanics together in order to exploit new information on the biology of vascular growth and remodeling (G&R). Although the framework presented in their paper was generalized for simplicity, they did illustrate the effectiveness of this framework by applying it to a fusiform aneurysm growth with idealized geometry. In the present work, we employ this framework and test it on an anatomically realistic model of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) growth. Similarly to Figueroa et al., when the stress-mediated kinetics only depends on intramural stress, the shape of the aneurysm and the expansion rate are similar to the results from the computation without using an iterative loop. However, we expect that when the stress-mediated kinetics depends on either shear or other hemodynamic components, the evolution of an AAA can change significantly.