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A prediction of in vivo mechanical stresses in blood vessels using thermal expansion method and its application to hypertension and vascular stenosis

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Abstract

Mechanical stimuli play critical roles in cardiovascular diseases, in which in vivo stresses in blood vessels present a great challenge to predict. Based on the structural–thermal coupled finite element method, we propose a thermal expansion method to estimate stresses in multi-layer blood vessels under healthy and pathological conditions. The proposed method provides a relatively simple and convenient means to predict reliable in vivo mechanical stresses with accurate residual stress. The method is first verified with the opening-up process and the pressure-radius responses for single and multi-layer vessel models. It is then applied to study the stress variation in a human carotid artery at different hypertension stages and in a plaque of vascular stenosis. Our results show that specific or optimal residual stresses exist for different blood pressures, which helps form a homogeneous stress distribution across vessel walls. High elastic shear stress is identified on the shoulder of the plaque, which contributes to the tearing effect in plaque rupture. The present study indicates that the proposed numerical method is a capable and efficient in vivo stress evaluation of patient-specific blood vessels for clinical purposes.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Prof. Shu Takagi and Prof. Huaxiong Huang for their instructive comments. The authors would also like to acknowledge Jianda Yang for assisting with FEM simulations. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 11372191, 11232010, 11650410650, 11550110185). The authors would like to acknowledge the support from the Tianjin Special Lecturer (Grant 91111138), and the National Institute of Health (Grant 2R01DC005642-10A1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Hydrodynamics (Ministry of Education), Department of Engineering Mechanics, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Shaoxiong Yang, Yunqiao Liu & Xiaobo Gong

  2. Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, 12180, USA

    Lucy T. Zhang

  3. School of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin, 300222, China

    Lucy T. Zhang

  4. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Cheng Hua

  5. Vascular Surgery Department, Shanghai Pudong Hospital, Fudan Affiliated Pudong Medical Center, Shanghai, 200120, China

    Jingdong Tang

  6. Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Ship and Deep Sea Exploration, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Xiaobo Gong

  7. Institute of Mechanobiology and Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Zonglai Jiang

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  1. Shaoxiong Yang
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  2. Lucy T. Zhang
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  3. Cheng Hua
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  4. Yunqiao Liu
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  5. Jingdong Tang
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  6. Xiaobo Gong
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Correspondence to Xiaobo Gong.

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Yang, S., Zhang, L.T., Hua, C. et al. A prediction of in vivo mechanical stresses in blood vessels using thermal expansion method and its application to hypertension and vascular stenosis. Acta Mech. Sin. 34, 1156–1166 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-018-0780-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-018-0780-1

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