pulsatile flow investigation in development of thoracic aortic aneurysm: an in-vitro validated fluid structure interaction analysis

Thoracic aortic aneurysm (taa) is a severe cardiovascular disease with a high mortality rate, if left untreated. clinical observations show that aneurysm growth can be linked to undesirable hemodynamic conditions of the aortic aneurysm. in order to gain more insight on taa formation, we developed a computational framework in vitro to investigate and compare the flow patterns between preaneurismal and postaneurismal aorta using a deformable wall model. this numerical framework was validated by an in vitro experiment accounting for the patientspecific geometrical features and the physiological conditions. the complex flow behaviors in the preaneurismal and postaneurismal aorta were evaluated experimentally by particle image velocimetry (piv). our experimental results demonstrated flow behaviors similar to those observed in the fluidstructure interaction (fsi) numerical study. we observed a small vortex induced by the nonplanarity of preaneurismal aorta near the aortic arch in preaneurysmal aorta may explain the aneurysm formation at the aortic arch. we found that high endothelial cell action potential (ecap) correlates with the recirculation regions, which might indicate possible thrombus development. the promising imagebased fluidstructure interaction model, accompanied with an in vitro experimental study, has the potential to be used for performing virtual implantation of newly developed stent graft for treatment of taa.