A COMPREHENSIVE TOOL FOR PATIENT-SPECIFIC AAA GEOMETRY AND BIOMECHANICS ASSESSMENT

摘要

Annual mortality from ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) in the United States alone is approximately 150,000, which is currently ranked as the 13th leading cause of death and the 10th leading cause of death in men over 55 years of age [1]. The vascular surgeon needs to weigh the risk of AAA rupture against the risk of surgical intervention to decide the best course of treatment. Several steps are involved when using computational techniques to evaluate risk of rupture [2], namely medical image segmentation, 3D reconstruction, finite element mesh generation, derivation of boundary conditions, specification of tissue material properties, etc. Currently, computational analysis of AAA biomechanics includes the use of multiple third-party commercial software tools to accomplish each of these steps, which makes its clinical implementation impractical, time-consuming and requiring to interface multiple software tools as this demands an engineering skill set.