Modelling the influence of endothelial heterogeneity on the progression of arterial disease: application to abdominal aortic aneurysm evolution

作者：Aparicio P; Mandaltsi A; Boamah J; Chen H; Selimovic A; Bratby M; Uberoi R; Ventikos Y; Watton P N^*

来源：International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering, 2014, 30(5): 563-586.

DOI：10.1002/cnm.2620

• growth and remodelling
• wall shear stress
• homeostasis
• cyclic deformation
• fluid-solid growth
• endothelial cell
• abdominal aortic aneurysm

We sophisticate a fluid-solid growth computational framework for modelling aneurysm evolution. A realistic structural model of the arterial wall is integrated into a patient-specific geometry of the vasculature. This enables physiologically representative distributions of haemodynamic stimuli, obtained from a rigid-wall computational fluid dynamics analysis, to be linked to growth and remodelling algorithms. Additionally, a quasistatic structural analysis quantifies the cyclic deformation of the arterial wall so that collagen growth and remodelling can be explicitly linked to the cyclic deformation of vascular cells. To simulate aneurysm evolution, degradation of elastin is driven by reductions in wall shear stress (WSS) below homeostatic thresholds. Given that the endothelium exhibits spatial and temporal heterogeneity, we propose a novel approach to define the homeostatic WSS thresholds: We allow them to be spatially and temporally heterogeneous. We illustrate the application of this novel fluid-solid growth framework to model abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) evolution and to examine how the influence of the definition of the WSS homeostatic threshold influences AAA progression. We conclude that improved understanding and modelling of the endothelial heterogeneity is important for modelling aneurysm evolution and, more generally, other vascular diseases where haemodynamic stimuli play an important role.

• 出版日期2014-5