Modeling fibrous tissue in vascular fluid-structure interaction: a morphology-based pipeline and biomechanical significance

Abstract

We propose a suite of technologies for analyzing the interaction between anisotropic arterial walls and blood flow for subject-specific geometries. Utilizing an established lumen modeling strategy, we present a comprehensive pipeline for generating the thick-walled artery models. Through a specialized mesh generation procedure, we obtain the meshes for the arterial lumen and wall with mesh continuity across the interface ensured. Exploiting the centerline information, a series of procedures is introduced for generating local basis vectors within the arterial wall. The procedures are tailored to handle thick-walled and, in particular, aneurysmatic tissues in which the basis vectors may exhibit transmural variations. Additionally, we propose methods to accurately identify the centerline in multi-branched vessels and bifurcating regions. The developed fiber generation method is evaluated against the strategy using linear elastic analysis, demonstrating that the proposed approach yields satisfactory fiber definitions in the considered benchmark. Finally, we examine the impact of anisotropic arterial wall models on the vascular fluid-structure interaction analysis through numerical examples. For comparison purposes, the neo-Hookean model is considered. The first case involves an idealized curved geometry, while the second case studies an image-based abdominal aorta model. The numerical results reveal that the deformation and stress distribution are critically related to the constitutive model of the wall, while the hemodynamic factors are less sensitive to the wall model. This work paves the way for more accurate image-based vascular modeling and enhances the prediction of arterial behavior under physiologically realistic conditions.