Experimental Studies of the Longitudinal Flexibility of Balloon-expandable Coronary Stents

摘要

Stents are medical devices used in cardiovascular intervention for unblocking the diseased arteries and restoring blood flow. A setup for the measurement of the longitudinal flexibility of a coronary stent was developed based on machine vision technology. A crimped stent made by medical stainless steel thin-walled tube was tested with the setup. The results show that the bending deformation of stent includes two phases: the elastic deformation phase and the plastic deformation phase. The bending angle changed very little with the increase of bending moment during the elastic deformation. However, the bending angle changed significantly when a small moment was applied during the plastic deformation. In conclusion, the experimental setup can be used to study and compare flexibility of different design kinds of coronary stents and provides a convenient tool for designers to improve bending characteristics of new stents.