Support for the calculation of stent fatigue fracture in peripheral arteries

Vascular stenting is a medical intervention in which a wire mesh tube is inserted into an artery or vein to provide internal support. This is a safe and common procedure, but stents are now increasingly being deployed in peripheral locations, such as the femoral artery, as part of a procedure called Peripheral Vascular Angioplasty (PVA). Stents in such locations are subject to cyclic bending, and are therefore at risk of fatigue fracture. This paper describes the work of the RT3S project, which brings together stent modelling, surgical simulation and risk calculation for surgical planning. This will allow the clinical user to interactively assess different stent models and deployment options for breakage risk. In the RT3S system, models of several commercial models of self-expanding stent are available for simulation. The placement of the stent in the vessel and the withdrawal of the catheter sheath to expand the stent are visualised. A simplex control mesh is used to guide the deformation of the stent from its compressed start configuration to its expanded final position. The fracture risk for the given model and its patient-specific final position is precomputed using the response surfaces methodology.