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DOI: 10.5301/ijao.

5000379

Int J Artif Organs 2014; 37 (12): 928-939

ORIGINAL ARTICLE - Focus on: Modeling approaches for endovascular devices

Feasibility of a priori numerical assessment of


plaque scaffolding after carotid artery stenting
in clinical routine: proof of concept
Francesco Iannaccone1, Sander De Bock1, Matthieu De Beule1,2, Frank Vermassen3, Isabelle Van Herzeele3,
Pascal Verdonck1, Patrick Segers1, Benedict Verhegghe1,2
IBiTech-bioMMeda, Ghent University, Ghent - Belgium
FEops bvba, Ghent - Belgium
3
Department of Thoracic and Vascular Surgery, Ghent University Hospital, Ghent - Belgium
1
2

Purpose: Carotid artery stenting (CAS) is an alternative procedure for the treatment of severely stenosed
carotid artery lesions in high-risk patients. Appropriate patient selection and stent design are paramount
to achieve a low stroke and death rate in these complex high-risk procedures. This study introduces and
evaluates a novel virtual, patient-specific, pre-operative environment to quantify scaffolding parameters
based on routine imaging techniques.
Methods: Two patients who underwent CAS with two different sizes of the Acculink stent (Abbott
Vascular, Santa Clara, CA, USA) were studied. Pre-operative data were used to build the numerical
models for the virtual procedure. Numerical results were validated with post-operative angiography.
Using novel virtual geometrical tools, incomplete stent apposition, free cell area and largest fitting
sphere in the stent cell were evaluated in situ as quantitative measures of successful stent placement
and to assess potential risk factors for CAS complications.
Results: A quantitative validation of the numerical outcome with post-operative images noted differences in lumen diameter of 5.31 8.05% and 4.12 9.84%, demonstrating the reliability of the proposed
methodology. The quantitative measurements of the scaffolding parameters on the virtually deployed
stent geometry highlight the variability of the device behavior in relation to the target lesion. The free
cell area depends on the target diameter and oversizing, while the largest fitting spheres and apposition
values are influenced by the local concavity and convexity of the vessel.
Conclusions: The proposed virtual environment may be an additional tool for endovascular specialists
especially in complex anatomical cases where stent design and positioning may have a higher impact on
procedural success and outcome.
Keywords: Carotid stenting, Plaque scaffolding, In vivo, Validation, Numerical simulation, Finite element
Accepted: December 16, 2014

Introduction
Carotid artery stenting (CAS) is an alternative procedure
for the treatment of severely stenosed symptomatic or
asymptomatic carotid artery lesions (70%) in high-risk
patients. The procedure has a similar stroke, death, and
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myocardial infarction rate as carotid endarterectomy (CEA)


(1, 2), although lower event rates have been reported for
CAS in younger patients (<69 years of age) in two large
randomized trials (3). Greater experience in this technique
on the part of physicians and centers is mandatory to
decrease the peri-operative risks of the procedure (3-6),

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Iannaccone et al

thereby shifting the major events to post-procedural complications (4) in well-selected patients.
It has been suggested that stroke after CAS may be caused
by embolization when the stent mesh is unable to adequately confine the plaque (5). In 75% of all procedures,
stents are likely to obtain similar results. However, accurate
screening and carotid stent choice is influenced mainly by
arterial anatomy and lesion morphology (7-9), suggesting
that the plaque scaffolding provided by the stent is one of
the key parameters to procedural success.
One of the requirements for carotid stent design is good
apposition to the vessel wall (10, 11) as the protruding
stent struts may induce (micro) thrombus formation by the
decreasing blood flow velocity (12, 13). The effect of incomplete stent apposition (ISA) has been studied in coronary arteries and appears to be a potential factor of late
stent thrombosis (14). Limited data is available about the
consequences of ISA on the clinical outcome of CAS (12),
leaving the associated risk of restenosis yet to be clarified.
This post-procedural risk is, at present, not trivial to assess
by imaging.
Mono and biplane angiography, currently the gold standard to assess CAS (15), is not an optimal technique for the
detection of stent apposition. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) (16) or Intra-vascular ultrasound (IVUS) (17)
have been proven to be safe and effective in quantifying
stent malapposition and plaque prolapse (associated with
major adverse events) but they are not yet routinely used
in CAS.
The influence of stent design on the peri- and early postprocedural neurological outcome is still an unsolved topic, mostly due to the lack of data relating stent design to
the clinical outcome (5, 18-21). A retrospective analysis of
patients treated with various carotid stents in symptomatic
and asymptomatic carotid artery disease demonstrated
increased post-procedural event rates for the four open
cell stents and for one of the three closed cell stents (5),
confirming the findings of other studies (18, 22). When the
stents were sub-grouped according to the free cell area
(FCA), higher post-procedural event rates were correlated
with an increase of FCA especially in symptomatic patients,
who are known to have an increased risk for stroke perioperatively (23). However, criticism has been raised due to
possible bias and confounders (24-26), specifically because
no objective measurement of silent brain infarction (such as
diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, DW-MRI)
was performed. At the same time, however, other studies

have failed to demonstrate statistically significant differences in stroke and death risk between patients treated with
open/closed stent designs or grouped by FCA (19, 25, 26).
Still, questions remain, especially since the occurrence of
any stroke is uncertain (27, 28) and may have an impact
on the interpretation of the results (25). Moreover, open
cell stent design has also been associated with fewer new
DW-MRI lesions (26), although in this particular study, unlike
the others (21), no embolic protection was used during the
procedure.
More recently a meta-analysis by Tadros et al (29) noted that
symptomatic patients with favorable anatomy treated with a
closed cell design have fewer major adverse events, reopening the debate. We feel it is safe to state that geometrical
features of the device may play a role in CAS outcomes and
newer devices are effectively focusing on improved scaffolding capabilities (28). Scaffolding parameters have been
previously proposed on the free expanded configuration
(11), although the same device can have a different behavior
in situ depending on the anatomical site (7-9).
Technical tools able to predict stent apposition and its
mechanical behavior in the treated vessel are appealing,
and may be beneficial for procedural planning. Numerical
simulations can be helpful to optimize carotid stent design,
and have proven to be a valid predictive tool when tested
in vitro (30), and useful in studying the behavior of different
stent designs implanted in a single carotid model (31-34).
Nevertheless, to the authors knowledge, no in vivo CAS
validations have been previously reported.
The present work introduces a novel virtual, patient-specific,
pre-operative environment to evaluate the feasibility of numerical prediction for clinical outcomes after CAS, focusing
on plaque scaffolding. Mechanical simulations have been
coupled with novel analysis tools to quantify scaffolding
parameters in situ. Two real patient cases treated with the
Acculink stent (Abbott Vascular, Santa Clara, CA, USA) were
studied to proof the concept. Routine pre- and post-stenting
imaging were compared with the computer simulations to
validate the virtual operative procedure.

Materials and Methods


Patient data
Two patient datasets (obtained after patients provided informed consent for the processing of their datasets) were

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Evaluation of plaque scaffolding after CAS

available for the study, referred to as patient A (male,


75 years old, 82% degree of stenosis in the internal carotid
artery, ICA) and patient B (female, 61 years, 79% degree
of stenosis in the ICA). Both asymptomatic patients were
treated via the transfemoral route using an embolic protection device (Emboshield NAV 6; Abbott Vascular, Santa
Clara, CA, USA). An Acculink stent was implanted by an
experienced team: tapered 7 10 40 mm for patient A
and tapered 7 10 30 mm for patient B. Pre-operative
computer tomography angiography (CTA) images were acquired with a Siemens Somatom Sensation Cardiac scanner with resolution of 0.37 0.37 1 mm for patient A and
Siemens Somatom Definition Flash scanner with resolution
of 0.54 0.54 3 mm for patient B (Siemens Healthcare,
Erlangen, Germany). Post-operative monoplane angiography was acquired using a Philips AlluraXPer FD10 (Philips
Healthcare Imaging Systems, Andover, MA, USA).

Fig. 1 - Work-flow of the vessel model reconstruction: segmentation


of the vessel lumen and calcified plaque (A); manual adjustment of
the lumen shape to create the assumed healthy lumen and retrieve
the subtracted non-calcified lesion depicted in blue (B); expansion
of the healthy lumen to create the outer vessel wall (C).

Vessel models
From the pre-operative CTA, geometries of the vessel lumen and of the calcified plaques were segmented (Fig. 1A)
using 3D Slicer software (35). Other tissues (such as soft
plaques and vessel wall) were not visible on CTA. To create
an approximate model of the vessel wall the following steps
were taken:
1. the geometry of the calcified plaque and the vessel lumen were combined and manually corrected to create
an approximated shape of the healthy lumen before lesion development (Fig. 1B);
2. the actual lumen and calcified plaque were subtracted
from the geometry of the healthy lumen in order to obtain the non calcified plaque geometries (Fig. 1B);
3. subsequently, the 3D triangulated models were generated for the diseased lumen, the plaques components,
and the healthy lumen;
4. the healthy lumen geometry was expanded to create
the outer vessel wall geometry; the radius of the vessel, computed per node as distance of the healthy lumen to the centerline of the vessel (computed in vmtk
(36)), was increased by 30% in the normal direction to
the surface, a realistic value of the carotid artery wall
thickness (37).
Starting from the geometry of the real lumen and the reconstructed outer wall, the 3D hexahedral mesh of the
vessel (Fig. 2) for the numerical solver was created using
930

Fig. 2 - Reconstructed vessel geometries of the 2 patients. Calcifications are depicted in white and the assumed hypo cellular plaque
in yellow.

IA_FEMesh (Finite Element Meshing Module), a meshing


tool embedded in 3D Slicer (38). The vessel was considered to be single-layered. The finite element analysis was
performed using brick elements with reduced integration (C3D8R in the Abaqus nomenclature) for both stent
devices and vessel geometries. The final meshes consisted of 79092 nodes and 35256 elements for the stent
and of 12848 nodes and 9477 elements for the vessel for
patient A, while the models of patient B counted 57534
nodes and 25680 elements for the stent and 11000
nodes and 8038 elements for the vessel. The density of
the meshes was increased at critical locations (crowns
and regions with higher curvature of the stent struts and
the stent landing zone of the vessels). The sections of the

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Iannaccone et al

stents counted 2 2 elements and we used 3 elements


along the thickness of the vessel wall. Displacement values were used to check convergence of the results. Since
doubling the number of elements along strut thickness
and width and the vessel wall resulted in similar displacement values, the coarser meshes were used to reduce
the computational cost. Note that an accurate stress
analysis which was not the goal of this work would require denser meshes to ensure reliability of the real stress
state, especially along the width of the device. Similar
mesh densities for the carotid arteries were previously
reported to have sufficient detail to describe stresses in
the wall (33).
The vessel geometry was used as reconstructed from the
scans, without including pre-stress and pre-stretch conditions. No physiological pressure was applied to the model.
To compensate for these limitations, we created an engineering equivalent of the vessel material to describe the
in vivo displacements which includes the effects of the in vivo
boundary conditions of the vessel (pre-pressurization, prestretch, interactions with the surrounding tissues, etc). This
approach neglects the real stress state of the material but
simplifies the simulation by allowing the implantation in an
unloaded vessel configuration.
We used a stress-strain curve for the arterial wall published
in a previous study (39). Then we scaled the curve to calibrate the actual deformations induced by the stent, and
coefficients of several hyperelastic constitutive models
were fit to the material response curve using the Evaluate
tool of the Abaqus software (Simulia Corp, Providence, RI,
USA) material menu.
Mainly due to stability concerns, we opted for a third
order Ogden hyperelastic material model formulation,
whose general strain energy potential U as a function of
the deviatoric principal stretches 1, 2 and 3 is given by:
N

U= 2
i =1

i i
1 + 2i + 3i 3
2i

where N, i and i are material parameters.


The original stress-strain curve was scaled along the
stretch axis to obtain a stiffer material at the beginning of
the curve (to faster reach higher stresses in the model) in
order to consider the effects of the pressurized in vivo condition. The scaling also provides stiffer behavior at higher
stretches to account for the interaction with the surrounding structures. The scaled curve does not describe the
real behavior of the vessel but only an equivalent material

that can mimic the combined effects of the in vivo pressurization, pre-stretch, and the stiffening provided by the
surrounding tissue. A scaling factor of 0.40 was found to
describe the correct displacements.
In order to account for the different plaque components,
the elements of the vessel mesh located inside the segmented plaque surfaces were selected. The material properties of the plaques were taken from Loree et al (40) and
fit using a first-order, hyperelastic Ogden model using the
previously mentioned Abaqus tool. To roughly emulate the
rupture of the plaque, we assumed a constant plastic behavior at the reported values of plaque rupture. All material
parameters are summarized in Table I.

Stent models
To retrieve the basic cell geometry, the stent models were
built starting from a micro-CT scan of a 8 20 mm Acculink
straight design. After segmentation of the stent geometry
(in 3D Slicer), a parametric hexahedral stent model was built
in pyFormex (41) using the approach described in De Bock
et al (42). The parametric model was adapted to create the
tapered stents (7 10 30 mm and 7 10 40 mm) shown
in Figure 3. Stent thickness and width were assumed equal
to the ones of the available sample, measured in 3D Slicer
(0.17 mm and 0.16 mm, respectively).
The stress-strain relationship of the nitinol alloy (Ti55.8
wt% Ni) was retrieved from the literature (43) and defined
using an embedded user subroutine in Abaqus based on
the model of Auricchio et al (44). Symmetry in compression was assumed (Tab. I). All phases of the device manipulation were assumed to occur at body temperature
of 37C.

Virtual stent deployment procedure


The numerical simulation involved non-linearity due to
the material properties, large deformations, and complex
contact problems of a real stent implantation; a quasi-static
analysis was performed using the commercial finite element
solver Abaqus/Explicit. The general contact algorithm was
used to handle the interactions, assuming a friction value of
0.05 for all the contact surfaces (34).
The stent placement was emulated imposing analytical
displacements to a cylindrical catheter (4-node surface elements with reduced integration - SFM3D4R) by a VDISP
subroutine to drive crimping, smooth bending along the

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Evaluation of plaque scaffolding after CAS

TABLE I - MATERIAL PARAMETERS FOR THE CALIBRATED VESSEL WALL, THE FIT PLAQUE COMPONENTS, AND THE
NITINOL STENT
Arterial material parameters

Calibrated
healthy wall

III order Ogden


(Hyperelastic)

Source

1
(kPa)

2
(kPa)

3
(kPa)

-14790

-2.14

10122

0.51

507

-7.79

(kPa)

Plasticity
threshold
(kPa)

Hypocellular
plaque

I order Ogden
(Hyperelastic)

21.8

24.72

400

Loree et al,
1994 (40)

Calcified
plaque

I order Ogden
(Hyperelastic)

72.34

25.00

400

Loree et al,
1994 (40)

Device material parameters

Nitinol

Ea (kPa)

va

Em
(kPa)

vm

LS
(kPa)

LE
(kPa)

TO

41000

0.3

23333

0.3

0.0437

450

520

37

US
UE
CLS
(kPa) (kPa) (kPa)
210

130

450

LV
0.0437 Gong et al,
2004 (43)

implantation both qualitatively (visual assessment) and


quantitatively measuring the relative errors e% between the
diameters of the stented location Dsimulation with respect to
the clinical data Din vivo measured as :

Fig. 3 - Implanted tapered Acculink stent model (7 10 40 mm and


7 10 30 mm).

centerline of the vessel and deployment of the stent at the


arterial lesion, as previously described (42). A similar cylindrical geometry was used to enlarge the vessels, to emulate balloon pre-dilation of the vessel to ensure the device
insertion in the vascular cavity.

Validation
To validate the numerical results we compared the postprocedural monoplane angiographic images and the virtual
932

e% =

Dsimulation Din vivo


100
Din vivo

The monoplane angiograms were previously calibrated


from the catheter size used during CAS. The numerical
results were imported in pyFormex to extract the vessel lumen. The angle of view of the deformed model was
manually adjusted in the viewer to match the position of
the in vivo dataset. In vivo and simulated implantation images were then calibrated to match the diameter of the
non-stented vessel portions.

Post-processing for evaluation of scaffolding


Three different parameters were measured to evaluate the
scaffolding of the stent, i.e. the support given by the stent
to the arterial lesion, as schematically depicted in Figure 4:
1. 
Incomplete strut apposition (ISA) to the vessel wall,
computed as the distance from the external stent surface nodes to the closest vessel surface element. As
a descriptive parameter of ISA, the percentage area of

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Iannaccone et al

Fig. 4 - Schematic description of the evaluated scaffolding parameters.

stent struts within a threshold distance of the vessel


wall relative to the total stent area was computed. The
threshold of 0.2 mm was chosen to identify most critical
areas undergoing ISA (16).
2. Stent cells areas of the implanted stent. The cell area
was computed from the minimal surfaces that could fill
the FCAs. The surface was created on the undeformed
stent, triangulating the cell nodes and keeping trace of
the connectivity of each triangle. Using the connectivity
table, the surface was then deformed according to the
new position of the cell nodes after the implant.
3. Largest fitting sphere (LFS) going through the FCA. The
surface fitting the FCA was seeded with an adequate
number of points (determined after convergence estimation). The minimum distance of each point to the
free edges of the cell was computed. The point (center
of the sphere) with the largest distance (radius of the
sphere) was then selected.

Results and Discussion

Fig. 5 - Qualitative comparison of the implanted stent configuration for patient A, showing the clinical and numerical results. From
left to right: angiography of stented lumen, numerical results, and
X-ray of the implanted stent. Red arrows indicate the location of the
measured diameters.

Fig. 6 - Qualitative comparison of the implanted stent configuration


for patient B, showing the clinical and numerical results. From left
to right: angiography of stented lumen, numerical results, and Xray of the implanted stent. Red arrows indicate the location of the
measured diameters.

Validation
The numerical simulations were able to emulate the overall shape of the implanted stents retrieved from the clinical monoplane angiographic images (Figs. 5 and 6). Table II
summarizes the relative error of the lumen diameters for the
indicated sections. Mean relative errors of the lumen diameters were 5.31 8.05% for patient A and 4.12 9.84% for
patient B.

Both the qualitative and quantitative comparison between


post-procedural angiography and the projected image of
the virtually implanted stent showed overall good agreement, capturing the main features of the deformed stent
shape. Patient A showed a somewhat better visual match

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TABLE II - ABSOLUTE VALUES OF THE DIAMETERS OF THE STENTED VESSEL AND THE RELATIVE ERROR BETWEEN THE
NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND THE CLINICAL DATA, COMPUTED AT 9 DIFFERENT SECTIONS
Diameters

Patient A

Patient B

Section
S1

S2

Numerical (mm)

7.38

Clinical (mm)

7.44

Average

S3

S4

S5

S6

8.59

4.82

4.20

4.59

3.71

8.12

3.99

3.78

4.17

3.94

-0.85

5.82

21.06

11.01

10.15

-5.73

S7

S8

S9

4.14

4.42

4.30

3.94

4.30

4.37

5.20

2.79

-1.61

Numerical (mm)

6.45

5.71

5.80

5.97

6.37

5.62

5.63

6.29

5.76

Clinical (mm)

6.45

6.18

6.54

5.89

5.30

4.96

5.21

5.96

5.37

0.00

-7.62

-11.25

1.26

20.28

13.33

8.10

5.55

7.40

5.31 8.05

4.12 9.27

TABLE III - 
AVERAGE RESULTS OF INCOMPLETE STRUT
APPOSITION, FREE CELL AREAS, AND THE
RADIUS OF THE LARGEST FITTING SPHERE
Global scaffolding parameters
Model

Stent area
with ISA (%)

FCAs (mm2)

Radius of
LFSs (mm)

Patient A

8.8%

7.69 3.05

0.45 0.11

Patient B

2.4%

7.59 2.80

0.46 0.11

of the stent shape compared to patient B, even though


average diameter errors were similar in both cases.
Fig. 7 - Incomplete strut apposition (struts colored in red) of the
implanted stents. Threshold was set at 0.2 mm. The arrows indicate
the regions where the fish scaling effect occurs.

Scaffolding
The results of the scaffolding evaluation are summarized in
Table III and Figures 7, 8, and 9.
As it can be observed in Figure 7, the open-cell design
showed ISA to the vessel wall in the most tortuous and anatomically complex regions. The percentage of stent struts
area with ISA was markedly higher for patient A (8.8% vs.
2.4%). Note, however, that results can be misleading due to
the fact that patient B had a completely occluded external
carotid artery and patient A had a larger part of the stent
deployed at the bifurcation region where there was a higher
mismatch between stent and vessel diameter, consequently
leading to a higher area of ISA. Both cases showed good
apposition to the ICA. For patient B the sections at the bifurcation and at the ICA were similar, giving better apposition
to the vessel wall, also due to a smaller curvature of the vessel. At the inner curvature of the vessel wall, ISA was noted
934

Fig. 8 - Free cell areas of the implanted stents (in mm2).

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Fig. 9 - Radius of the largest fitting spheres of the implanted stents


(in mm). Red arrows show the concave regions of the vessel, which
are associated with relatively large spheres compared to the convex
regions. The green arrow shows how the fish scaling can influence
the dimensions of the spheres.

in both cases, also showing the fish scaling effect that is


typical for stents with an open-cell design. This effect was
very apparent in patient A at the bifurcation (Fig. 7). Distal
ISA, which was reported previously (12), occurred in patient
B, while proximal ISA occurred in both patients.
The analysis of the deformed free cell area (FCA) showed
that the target diameter of the vessel highly influences scaffolding provided by the device. In fact, patient A, with a
smaller ICA diameter resulted in smaller FCAs compared to
patient B with a larger ICA diameter (Fig. 8). Also, in patient
B, the cross-sectional change of the vessel was less pronounced, leading to a more uniform cell shape deformation.
The largest fitting spheres (LFSs, Fig. 9) did not pace the
FCAs distribution. Maximum values of FCAs do not necessarily correspond to higher values of the LFSs. For patient B,
the FCAs were similar at the bifurcation and at the mid part
of the stent, while the LFSs were more inhomogeneous,
ranging from 0.36 mm to 0.7 mm. High values of LFSs
were found at the ICA, mainly concerning the cells apposing at the concave region of the vessel. Similar considerations can be made for patient A. The chosen stent, which
corresponds to the diameter requirements of the distal
ICA, was undersized for the bifurcation diameter resulting in an under-expansion of the stent, leading to a free
expanded-like configuration with higher FCAs and LFSs.
It can be noticed that high values of LFCs were also found
at the distal location of the ICA, again at a concave part of
the vessel although the FCA is small. This seems reasonable when thinking of a bending bar: at the inner curvature,

stent struts get closer, while at outer curvatures they widen. The values were also influenced by ISA. In fact, if the
cell opens in the radial directions, due to fish scaling,
this resulted in higher LFSs compared to a more planar
configuration, as indicated by the green arrow in Figure 9.
As highlighted in our study, the fish scaling effect is present
even with moderate tortuosity at the convex lumen regions,
which will clearly be more accentuated with a more complex lumen shape. It has been speculated that fish scaling
may contribute to restenosis and stent fracture (10). The
price for the absence of shortening, optimal conformability
and flexibility of the open-cell design leads to plaque scaffolding with lower plaque coverage, possibly promoting
plaque protrusion through the interstices of the stent struts,
allowing plaque material to embolize after implantation (45).
Nevertheless, in the analyzed patients due to a straight,
post-stented vessel geometry and adequate sizing, the
stent seems to offer a good scaffolding of the lesion.
Another variable to take into account may be device oversizing. Even though manufacturers provide guidelines, the
choice for a certain degree of oversizing still depends on
operators preference and experience and on the high variability of the carotid anatomy. In patient A the stent had a
larger degree of oversizing, resulting in a higher closure of
the stent cells at the ICA, offering more lesion protection
and increasing surface covering. Oversizing may, however,
lead to increased tension on the vessel wall, consequently
causing neointimal hyperplasia and restenosis (46).
In a previous finite element study, Conti et al (31) constructed a single atherosclerotic carotid model which was
virtually treated with four different types of stents (including Acculink); they then analyzed the FCAs. Likewise, the
authors found a higher reduction of the cell area at the middle location as in patient A. Further comparisons are not
possible due to the different anatomy, the lower degree of
stenosis, and different stent positioning.
In the same study, it was highlighted that LFSs in the free
expanded configuration (as previously described (11)) cannot capture differences in stent designs. Nevertheless, it is
our opinion that LFSs in the deformed configuration can
be relevant for measuring the maximum plaque particles
potentially protruding through the stent struts, especially
when similar devices are compared under different conditions. LFSs may improve and refine the FCA analysis. In
fact, cells with similar FCAs may result in various deformed
shapes that influence the LFSs (see the ICA segment
in Figs. 8 and 9 for both patients), suggesting that both

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measures are complementary scaffolding parameters.


LFSs may be regarded as a measure of how opposite struts
of a single cell are tied, i.e. how the cell is assembled.
An obvious observation from our results is that the specificity of the lesion influences stent behavior and its scaffolding capability. CAS success has been often thought to
be influenced by stent design, i.e. open versus closed stent
design, but this may be too basic, as previously suggested
(44). To refine the discrimination, other studies refer to FCA
in the free expanded configuration (more than open versus
closed design) to be an important parameter in CAS failure
(5). However, other stent characteristics, such as conformability in angulated arteries and low radial force, play a role
in selecting the appropriate stent (11, 24, 45, 47).
Measurements of the maximum free cell area and the cell
pore diameter of the free expanded stent previously proposed (11) can be misleading, as the deformed configuration of the deployed stent in a tortuous vessel is neglected.
Our approach may be more suitable to analyze cell support
at the lesion. Our results also suggest that global values
may not be adequate because they can mask zones at
higher risk for embolization (i.e., at the lipid plaque location). According to Table III, the mean values of FCAs and
LFSs do not show any difference between the two patients, even though the two stents behaved very differently.
On the other hand, a visual evaluation of the scaffolding
parameters of the virtual implantation allows a direct assessment of the possible CAS outcome scenarios.
A recent study, using a strategy that is similar to ours, compared vessel changes after virtual balloon expanded coronary stenting with clinical images from two patients (48).
They were able to reproduce the general geometrical features of the stented vessel and performed both a qualitative
validation (comparing the stented vessel lumen of conventional angiographic images and the numerical results) and
a quantitative analysis, measuring the straightening of the
vessel in one patient for whom CTA data were available. Although their results suggest the feasibility of their numerical
approach, the differences in the interventional procedure
along with the vascular district and parameters used for the
validation make a direct comparison with the results of our
work difficult.

Limitations
The main limitations of our study are related to the imaging
techniques used to retrieve pre- and post-operative data.
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The routine pre-operative CTA scans do not provide accurate information about the vessel wall and, more importantly, about soft plaques. Validation of the results should
ideally be based on imaging techniques that allow a direct
comparison with the post-operative 3D stent configuration and/or are able to quantify the ISA, which cannot be
measured by conventional angiography. Inadequate CTA
resolutions can mask abrupt changes of the lesion, thereby
introducing inaccuracies into the pre-stented vessel geometry, which may be amplified by the smoothing algorithms
to clean the surface for model meshing. Also, the artery
is acquired by CTA at a certain phase of the cardiac cycle,
which may be different during post-procedural imaging
due to a different pressure load. The position of the neck
also changes the carotid configuration (11, 49) potentially
raising additional mismatches between the numerical and
the angiographic configurations.
The difficulties that may be encountered in linking pre- and
post-treatment imaging data in this hybrid angio suite can
be shown by some of the pre-operative sequences of patient B, who exhibited less accurate validation. Figure 10A
shows how displacements of the artery (due either to patient
movements, heart rate or blood pressure changes) during
the injection of the contrast agent modify the curvature and
configuration of the pre-stented vessel. Rigorous validation
thus requires strict protocols. Ideally, an identical position of
the patient should be used during the procedure with stable
hemodynamics. We believe that these factors contribute to
the initial mismatch between pre- and post-operative data
as displayed in Figure 10. Moreover, the angiographic pictures show irregularities and ulceration of the plaque anatomy that could not be detected by the CTA scans due to the
low resolution in the axial direction (arrows in Fig. 10).
Although the level of complexity in the simulations is high,
there are still important simplifications in the in vivo loading
(ignoring blood pressure, pre-stretching and pre-stresses)
and on the lesion morphology due to routine CTA inability to
recognize different tissues (lack of ulceration, thrombus or
fibrous cap, assumptions of vessel thickness, single-layered
vessel). A multi-detector scanner and specific reconstruction algorithms may improve the lesion imaging (50).
These factors, together with the high variability of the biological materials, complicate a correct per-patient calibration of
anisotropic material models. An isotropic material model was
used in this study, which might not adequately describe the
real biomechanics of the vascular tissue (51). We needed to
stiffen the artery by scaling the original arterial stress-strain

2014 Wichtig Publishing - ISSN 0391-3988

Iannaccone et al

Fig. 10 - Mismatch of the pre-operative condition between conventional angiography and the reconstructed model. Arterial configuration
changes during contrast agent injection (A). The border (in red) of the
vessel from angiography at a certain instant is overlaid on the angiography at a subsequent instant clearly showing the modification of the lumen shape due to loading factors. At the bottom the arterial geometry
from the CTA is depicted (B). The red arrows indicate the irregularities
not detected in the CTA (B), which are visible in the angiography (A).

curve in order to achieve better matching with the in vivo


data. This is in line with the results of Auricchio et al (51) who
found larger vessel deformation with the mentioned model
when compared with other literature data. One might speculate that when dealing with in vivo structures even accurate
ex vivo experimental material description may underestimate
the real stiffness of the treated vessel if the in vivo loading
conditions and the interaction with surrounding structures
are neglected. To overcome the latter problem, alternatively
to our approach, spring elements might be considered to
describe these interactions as previously suggested (52).

Conclusions
In the present study we used finite element computer model simulations to imitate CAS procedures, and applied automatic tools to quantify vessel scaffolding in two patients.
Results showed the feasibility of the proposed method
with an overestimation of the predicted stented lumen diameter of 5.31 8.05% and 4.12 9.84% for the two pa-

tients compared to the clinical outcome. The quantitative


measurements of the incomplete stent apposition, free cell
areas, and largest fitting spheres highlighted the variability
of device behavior in relation to the target lesion. In general, the free cell area depended on the target diameter and
oversizing, while the largest fitting spheres and apposition
values were influenced by the local concavity and convexity of the vessel region.
The proposed method, pending a more accurate 3D in vivo
validation with a larger number of datasets, may be an additional tool for cardiovascular interventionists for a proper
selection of stent design and more accurate positioning
in complex anatomies. This would help to reduce postprocedural strokes by better assessing a priori the potential risk of embolization.

Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge P. Mortier, PhD, and G.
De Santis, PhD, for their valuable support in the modeling process and results evaluation, and B. Vandeghinste for sharing
his expertise in medical imaging.
Financial Support: This study was financially supported by the
Research Foundation Flanders (FWO grant 3G06591) and by Ghent
University (grant BOF10/GOA/005).
Conflict of Interest: The authors have no financial disclosures. M. De
Beule and B. Verhegghe are shareholders of FEops, an engineering
consultancy spin-off from Ghent University, and have served as consultants for several medical device companies.
Meeting Presentations: Part of this work was presented at the 11th
International Symposium on Computer Methods in Biomechanics and
Biomedical Engineering held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, in an oral
presentation given on April 6, 2013. A poster presentation was given
on June 12, 2013 at the Multidisciplinary European Endovascular
Therapy conference in Rome, Italy.
Address for correspondence:
Francesco Iannaccone
Universiteit Gent IbiTech
De Pintelaan 185, blok B/5
B-9000 Gent, Belgium
francesco.iannaccone@ugent.be

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