Personalised imaging and biomechanical modelling of large vessels

Abstract

The large blood vessels are crucial for blood flow distribution in the body but they may be subjected to disease processes like atherosclerosis, and consequences thereof like aneurysm formation, stroke, and myocardial infarction. These diseases are associated to a majority of the mortality of cardiovascular disease, which may be as high as 33% of overall disease related mortality. The function of these blood vessels has successfully been studied in the framework of biology, physics, and imaging. While a decade ago vessel function was merely described in terms of average blood flow, overall compliance and distensibility, the turbulent development of computational resources and numerical modelling has enabled calculations of local wall stress, local blood flow, and local wall deformation. Especially the methods to solve the non-linear Navier‐ Stokes equations and the equations that describe non-linear solid mechanics have evolved over the last decade and currently enable shear stress distributions in complex vessel geometries. Furthermore, the development of invasive and non-invasive imaging enables imaging the 3D geometry of blood vessels and thereby to develop personalised and segmental calculations of the wall stress and shear stress fields. This Special Issue is focussed upon the development and improvement of methods to obtain personalised information of the arterial tree in terms of vascular geometry, pressure distribution, shear stress distribution and wall stress distribution, in order to predict better interventions for individual patients. The first paper in this issue [9] gives an overview of developments in diagnostic tests for carotid and coronary disease, and aortic aneurysms and dissection. It is concluded that improved diagnostics by applying biophysics based mathematical model eventually will lead to improved patient management. In the second series of papers the technical description of automated methods for image reconstruction is presented. In the first of the series, Peiro [8] describe methods