@Article{cmes.2019.07428,
AUTHOR = {Long Yu, Kesong Xu, Jun Wan, Haiyan Lu, Shengzhang Wang},
TITLE = {Effect of the Wall Thickness of the Vessel on FFR<sub>CT</sub> of Carotid Artery Stenosis},
JOURNAL = {Computer Modeling in Engineering \& Sciences},
VOLUME = {121},
YEAR = {2019},
NUMBER = {3},
PAGES = {835--844},
URL = {http://www.techscience.com/CMES/v121n3/38072},
ISSN = {1526-1506},
ABSTRACT = {Fractional flow reserve (FFR) computed from computed tomography
angiography (CTA), i.e., FFR<sub>CT</sub> has been used in the clinic as a noninvasive parameter for
functional assessment of coronary artery stenosis. It has also been suggested to be used in
the assessment of carotid artery stenosis. The wall thickness of the vessel is an important
parameter when establishing a fluid-structure coupling model of carotid stenosis. This
work studies the effect of the vessel wall thickness on hemodynamic parameters such as
FFR<sub>CT</sub> in carotid stenosis. Models of carotid stenosis are established based on CTA image
data using computer-aided design software. It is assumed that the vessel wall is a linear
elastic and isotropic material, and the blood an incompressible Newtonian fluid. Under the
pulsating flow condition, ANSYS Transient Structural and CFX are used to simulate the
blood flow of fluid-structure coupling in the carotid stenosis model in order to obtain
hemodynamic parameters and the corresponding FFR<sub>CT</sub>. The results show that when the
elastic modulus of the vessel wall is fixed, FFR<sub>CT</sub> will decrease with the increase of the
wall thickness. Similarly, FFR<sub>CT</sub> will decrease with the increase of the elastic modulus
when the wall thickness is fixed. The difference in hemodynamic parameters such as FFR<sub>CT</sub>,
however, is relatively small if the stiffness of the two models are close. The results
demonstrate that the effect of the vessel wall thickness, especially for a model with small
elastic modulus, should be taken into account in using FFR<sub>CT</sub> for functional assessment of
carotid stenosis. Moreover, under the linear elasticity and isotropic material assumptions,
the stiffness coefficient may replace the elastic modulus and wall thickness as a parameter
reflecting material property of the vessel wall in the carotid stenosis model.},
DOI = {10.32604/cmes.2019.07428}
}