Towards in vivo aorta material identification and stress estimation

This paper addresses the problem of constructing a mechanical model for the abdominal aorta and calibrating its parameters to in vivo measurable data. The aorta is modeled as a pseudoelastic, thick-walled, orthotropic, residually stressed cylindrical tube, subjected to an internal pressure. The model parameters are determined by stating a minimization problem for the model pressure and computing the optimal solution by a minimization algorithm. The data used in this study is in vivo pressure–diameter data for the abdominal aorta of a 24-year-old man. The results show that the axial, circumferential and radial stresses have magnitudes in the span 0 to 180 kPa. Furthermore, the results show that it is possible to determine model parameters directly from in vivo measurable data. In particular, the parameters describing the residual stress distribution can be obtained without interventional procedures.