Abstract
Quantifying the remodeling response of healthy matured arteries to sustained changes in blood pressure and flow is important to understand normal arterial function and to reveal potential mechanisms associated with vascular disorders. A majority of theoretical studies on remodeling have assumed that new mass is formed via a proportional production of load-bearing constituents, namely elastin, collagen, and smooth muscle. A novel method for theoretical study of arterial remodeling is used to evaluate the effects of mass redistribution among structural components and changes in collagen fiber configuration on the geometrical outputs of arterial remodeling.
Organ culture systems are used to study remodeling of arteries and to fabricate tissue engineered vascular grafts. A new experimental paradigm is proposed based on the simultaneous independent control of local mechanical parameters such as mean strain or stress in the arterial wall and flow-induced shear at the intima. The operation of the system is illustrated by maintenance of elevated axial medial stress in a porcine carotid artery, while keeping the mean circumferential stress and flow-induced shear stress at baseline values.
Mechanical stimulation has been shown to dramatically improve mechanical and functional properties of gel-derived tissue engineered blood vessels (TEBVs). Adjusting factors such as cell source, type of extracellular matrix, cross-linking, magnitude, frequency, and time course of mechanical stimuli (among many other factors) make interpretation of experimental results challenging. The study focuses on the modeling framework and simulations for mechanically mediated growth, remodeling, plasticity, and damage of gel-derived TEBVs that merge ideas from classical plasticity, volumetric growth, and continuum damage mechanics.
Alexander Rachev
Institute of Mechanics, Bulgarian Academy of Science, Sofia
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering,
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
College of Engineering and Computing, University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC