Atherosclerosis Plaque Stress Analysis: A Review

Stroke has been considered to be one of the leading causes of death all over the world. Although many studies have been conducted to understand the mechanism of plaque rupture, which leads to stroke, the exact mechanism still remains unclear. It has been widely accepted that both plaque morphology and biomechanical environment of the plaques will affect plaque vulnerability. Since 1990s, many studies have been devoted to plaque stress analysis in order to demonstrate the possible links between plaque rupture and abnormal plaque stress conditions. In this chapter, plaque wall stress analysis will be reviewed from 2D to 3D, from idealized models to patient-specific plaques in terms of geometrical accuracy, and from structure analysis only to fluid–structure interaction (FSI) analysis, with computational examples from our group.

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