The impact of arterial flow complexity on flow diverter outcomes in aneurysms.

The flow diverter is becoming a standard device for treating cerebral aneurysms. The aim of this in vitro study was to evaluate the impact of flow complexity on the effectiveness of flow diverter stents in a cerebral aneurysm model. The flow pattern of a carotid artery was decomposed into harmonics to generate four flow patterns with different pulsatility indexes ranging from 0.

An in vitro test bench reproducing coronary blood flow signals.

Background: It is a known fact that blood flow pattern and more specifically the pulsatile time variation of shear stress on the vascular wall play a key role in atherogenesis. The paper presents the conception, the building and the control of a new in vitro test bench that mimics the pulsatile flows behavior based on in vivo measurements.

Methods: An in vitro cardiovascular simulator is alimented with in vivo constraints upstream and provided with further post-processing analysis downstream in order to mimic the pulsatile in vivo blood flow quantities.