objectives: Endovascular stents, such as coronary stents, are widely used for the treatment of narrowed or blocked blood vessels caused by plaque formation in the arteries. The narrowing of expanded blood vessels (restenosis) is perhaps the major complication associated with endovascular stent implantation that is believed to be caused by insufficient metallic surface area (MSA) in some stent designs. Our aim was to compare three examination methods which were developed at our department, to measure stent surface areas.

methods: The first method was manually performed using rotating equipment under a stereomicroscope. The second method, which has recently been developed, is an automated method using an integrated scanner and a rotating engine. Both methods aimed at converting the cylindrical stent into a flattened two-dimensional image in order to enable the measurement of stent surface area by imaging software. The third method is based on a calculation which uses various stent values such as diameter, length, and strut thickness. Each measurement process was tested on different types of stents.

results: Our findings showed that the methods gave similar results. The largest differences between the methods were speed and accuracy.

conclusions: The results lead us to propose favouring the automated rotation method. 

DOI: 10.17489/biohun/2013/1/23