A patient-specific image-based approach to estimate pulmonary artery stiffness based on vessel constitutive model.

An accurate non-invasive evaluation of the mechanical properties of the vessel wall is important for a variety of screening protocols and surgical treatments. In this work, we focused on a section of the Pulmonary Artery (PA), and developed a patient-specific approach to estimate its stiffness in terms of the Young's modulus along the circumferential direction (E). First, we developed a patient-specific semi-automatic approach to estimate its expected value and standard deviation.