Identification of Heterogeneous Elastic Properties in Stenosed Arteries: a Numerical Plane Strain Study

TL;DR

This study investigates the feasibility of accurately estimating the heterogeneous elastic properties of stenosed arteries using numerical plane strain models, considering factors like mesh, assumptions, resolution, and noise.

Contribution

It provides a numerical analysis of how various factors affect the inverse problem of identifying arterial tissue properties from displacement data.

Findings

Mesh quality impacts parameter accuracy

A priori assumptions influence identifiability

Measurement noise affects estimation reliability

Abstract

Assessing the vulnerability of atherosclerotic plaques requires an accurate knowledge of the mechanical properties of the plaque constituents. It is possible to measure displacements in vivo inside a plaque using magnetic resonance imaging. An important issue is to solve the inverse problem that consists in estimating the elastic properties inside the plaque from measured displacements. This study focuses on the identifiability of elastic parameters e.g. on the compromise between identification time and identification accuracy. An idealised plane strain. Finite Element (FE) model is used. The effects of the FE mesh, of the a priori assumptions about the constituents, of the measurement resolution and of the data noise are numerically investigated.