Title: Human aortic atherosclerotic plaque characterisation under acoustic radiation force impulse using fluid-structural-interface simulations

Authors: Kexin Lin; Han Li; Danial Shahmirzadi

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, USA ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, USA ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, USA

Abstract: Aortic atherosclerotic plaque is a common cardiovascular disease that causes complications in blood flow and arterial pulsations. The high costs and risks of intervention warrant some methods to distinguish between vulnerable plaques in high needs of intervention, from the stable ones; and Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI) has increasingly being considered as promising technique for doing so noninvasively. In this study, a Fluid-Solid Interaction (FSI) numerical framework is established to simulate the implementation of ARFI on a human aortic plaque model in order to provide parametric, quantified insights into the phenomena involved in the tissue-device interactions that could be used for tailored design and optimisation of the ARFI systems for various therapeutics and monitoring applications. The feasibility of using dynamic FSI simulations of human arterial plaques in quantifying the effects of parameters such as ARFI force magnitude, frequency, impulse period as well as the Young's modulus of plaque was demonstrated. Inhomogeneous patterns of displacement variations were found in the aorta walls and plaque zones as ARFI parameters vary. The simulation findings provide a set of baseline data to lead future animal and clinical studies of ARFI for various plaque examinations.

Keywords: ARFI; acoustic radiation force impulse; FSI; fluid-structure interaction simulation; cardiovascular diagnostics and therapeutics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2017.083819

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2017 Vol.24 No.1, pp.72 - 89

Received: 03 Feb 2016
Accepted: 03 Apr 2016
Published online: 24 Apr 2017 *

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