Multicomponent Mechanical Characterization of Atherosclerotic Human Coronary Arteries

Multicomponent Mechanical Characterization of Atherosclerotic Human Coronary Arteries: An Experimental and Computational Hybrid Approach

Guvenir Torun, Su (Erasmus MC)
Torun, Hakki M. (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Hansen, Hendrik H.G. (Radboud University Medical Center)
Gandini, Giulia (Erasmus MC; Politecnico di Milano)
Berselli, Irene (Erasmus MC; Politecnico di Milano)
Codazzi, Veronica (Erasmus MC; Politecnico di Milano)
de Korte, Chris L. (Radboud University Medical Center; University of Twente)
van der Steen, A.F.W. (Erasmus MC)
Migliavacca, Francesco (Politecnico di Milano)
Chiastra, Claudio (Politecnico di Torino)
Akyildiz, A.C. (TU Delft Medical Instruments & Bio-Inspired Technology; Erasmus MC)

2021

Atherosclerotic plaque rupture in coronary arteries, an important trigger of myocardial infarction, is shown to correlate with high levels of pressure-induced mechanical stresses in plaques. Finite element (FE) analyses are commonly used for plaque stress assessment. However, the required information of heterogenous material properties of atherosclerotic coronaries remains to be scarce. In this work, we characterized the component-wise mechanical properties of atherosclerotic human coronary arteries. To achieve this, we performed ex vivo inflation tests on post-mortem human coronary arteries and developed an inverse FE modeling (iFEM) pipeline, which combined high-frequency ultrasound deformation measurements, a high-field magnetic resonance-based artery composition characterization, and a machine learning-based Bayesian optimization (BO) with uniqueness assessment. By using the developed pipeline, 10 cross-sections from five atherosclerotic human coronary arteries were analyzed, and the Yeoh material model constants of the fibrous intima and arterial wall components were determined. This work outlines the developed pipeline and provides the knowledge of non-linear, multicomponent mechanical properties of atherosclerotic human coronary arteries.

atherosclerosis
Bayesian optimization
coronary artery
finite element analysis
inflation test
material constant
ultrasound
Yeoh model

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:03a0d608-fd6f-4bde-905c-ef8b212cbf32

https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2021.733009

Frontiers in Physiology, 12

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2021 Su Guvenir Torun, Hakki M. Torun, Hendrik H.G. Hansen, Giulia Gandini, Irene Berselli, Veronica Codazzi, Chris L. de Korte, A.F.W. van der Steen, Francesco Migliavacca, Claudio Chiastra, A.C. Akyildiz