Correlation of Regional Aortic Wall Deformation With Finite Element Analysis Derived Stress

Abstract

Prior work has shown that finite element analysis-derived aortic wall stress (FEA-WS) correlates with abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) growth, but FEA-WS remains cumbersome to calculate and difficult to interpret, limiting its utility in predicting rupture and guiding repair. Measuring interval regional aortic wall deformation (RAWD) by deformation image registration is faster than calculating FEA-WS, is easily interpretable (“expansion”), and has been shown to have submillimeter accuracy; RAWD may therefore be more useful in AAA surveillance.