In clinical practice, management of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) is predominantly based on the diameter of the lumen. State-of-the-art fluid structure interaction (FSI) simulations have proven to be superior in estimating rupture risk, although they still have considerable shortcomings. In this paper we address one such unresolved problem, and present the outline of biomechanical material parameter distribution identification via inverse finite element (FE) analysis.

Our method is based on the non invasive approximation of the displacement field using electrocardiogram-gated computer tomography angiography (ECG-gated CT-angiography, CTA) and estimating the load field with usual computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Parameters of our model connecting the two abovementioned sets of variables result from an optimization algorithm minimizing a work and energy related variational functional. Consequently, also supported by experimental measurements, we are able to assess local distribution of the biomechanical material properties of the arterial wall and give a functional characterization of vessel wall degeneration.

DOI: 10.17489/biohun/2015/2/06