Category: Publications
Home / News & Events /
10 March 2023

“Uncertainty Quantification in the In Vivo Image-Based Estimation of Local Elastic Properties of Vascular Walls”, a new publication in collaboration with the MeDiTATe project

A new paper Uncertainty Quantification in the In Vivo Image-Based Estimation of Local Elastic Properties of Vascular Walls has been published in the MDPI Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease in collaboration with the MeDiTATe project.

The paper was written by Benigno Marco Fanni (BioCardioLab FTGM), Maria Nicole Antonuccio, ESR 14 of the MeDiTATe project, Simona Celi (BioCardioLab FTGM), Alessandra Pizzuto and Giuseppe Santoro (Pediatric Cardiology Unit, FTGM), Sergio Berti (Adult Cardiology Unit, FTGM).

Here follows the paper’s abstract:

Introduction: Patient-specific computational models are a powerful tool for planning cardiovascular interventions. However, the in vivo patient-specific mechanical properties of vessels represent a major source of uncertainty. In this study, we investigated the effect of uncertainty in the elastic module (E) on a Fluid–Structure Interaction (FSI) model of a patient-specific aorta. Methods: The image-based χ-method was used to compute the initial E value of the vascular wall. The uncertainty quantification was carried out using the generalized Polynomial Chaos (gPC) expansion technique. The stochastic analysis was based on four deterministic simulations considering four quadrature points. A deviation of about ±20% on the estimation of the E value was assumed. Results: The influence of the uncertain E parameter was evaluated along the cardiac cycle on area and flow variations extracted from five cross-sections of the aortic FSI model. Results of stochastic analysis showed the impact of E in the ascending aorta while an insignificant effect was observed in the descending tract. Conclusions: This study demonstrated the importance of the image-based methodology for inferring E, highlighting the feasibility of retrieving useful additional data and enhancing the reliability of in silico models in clinical practice.

6 March 2023

A new MeDiTATe project publication: “Assessment of shape-based features ability to predict the ascending aortic aneurysm growth”

Leonardo Geronzi, ESR 02 of the MeDiTATe project, published the paper Assessment of shape-based features ability to predict the ascending aortic aneurysm growth in the Frontiers in Physiology journal.

This work involved the collaboration of several universities, research centres and three French hospitals: the University Hospital of Rennes, the University Hospital of Dijon and the University Hospital of Toulouse.

The full paper is available at this link on the Frontiers journal website. Antonio Martinez Pascual, ESR 01 of the MeDiTATe project, also participated in this work.

This publication shows the importance of considering the shape of the ascending aorta in predicting the risk of aneurysm growth. In fact, the work aims at explaining how to compute some shape features on the ascending tract and how to use machine learning classifiers to assess the risk of growth. The results provide a clear indication that a set of shape features could be selected to identify patients at high risk of growth more accurately than the maximum diameter alone.

6 February 2023

“An image-based approach for the estimation of arterial local stiffness in vivo”, a new paper in collaboration with the MeDiTATe project

A new paper An image-based approach for the estimation of arterial local stiffness in vivo has been published in the Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology journal in collaboration with the MeDiTATe project.

The paper was written by Simona Celi, Emanuele Gasparotti, Katia Capellini and Emanuele Vignali from BioCardioLab (Fondazione Toscana G. Monasterio), Francesco Bardi (ESR 10), Martino Andrea Scarpolini (ESR 09), Carlo Cavaliere (IRCCS SynLab SDN) e Filippo Cademartiri (Dipartimento Immagini, Fondazione Toscana Gabriele Monasterio).

Here follows the paper’s abstract:

The analysis of mechanobiology of arterial tissues remains an important topic of research for cardiovascular pathologies evaluation. In the current state of the art, the gold standard to characterize the tissue mechanical behavior is represented by experimental tests, requiring the harvesting of ex-vivo specimens. In recent years though, image-based techniques for the in vivo estimation of arterial tissue stiffness were presented. The aim of this study is to define a new approach to provide local distribution of arterial stiffness, estimated as the linearized Young’s Modulus, based on the knowledge of in vivo patient-specific imaging data. In particular, the strain and stress are estimated with sectional contour length ratios and a Laplace hypothesis/inverse engineering approach, respectively, and then used to calculate the Young’s Modulus. After describing the method, this was validated by using a set of Finite Element simulations as input. In particular, idealized cylinder and elbow shapes plus a single patient-specific geometry were simulated. Different stiffness distributions were tested for the simulated patient-specific case. After the validation from Finite Element data, the method was then applied to patient-specific ECG-gated Computed Tomography data by also introducing a mesh morphing approach to map the aortic surface along the cardiac phases. The validation process revealed satisfactory results. In the simulated patient-specific case, root mean square percentage errors below 10% for the homogeneous distribution and below 20% for proximal/distal distribution of stiffness. The method was then successfully used on the three ECG-gated patient-specific cases. The resulting distributions of stiffness exhibited significant heterogeneity, nevertheless the resulting Young’s moduli were always contained within the 1–3 MPa range, which is in line with literature.

12 January 2023

“Fabrication of Compliant and Transparent Hollow Cerebral Vascular Phantoms for In Vitro Studies Using 3D Printing and Spin–Dip Coating”, the latest publication of the MeDiTATe project, now available in Materials journal by MDPI

Beatrice Bisighini, ESR 03 of the MeDiTATe project, published the paper Fabrication of Compliant and Transparent Hollow Cerebral Vascular Phantoms for In Vitro Studies Using 3D Printing and Spin–Dip Coating in the Materials journal by MDPI.


The paper, developed in collaboration with Pierluigi Di Giovanni (HSL), Alba Scerrati (University of Ferrara), Federica Trovalusci and Silvia Vesco (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”), is available on the MDPI website at this link.

Here follows the publication’s abstract. Read More

9 January 2023

A new MeDiTATe project publication: “Potential of auxetic designs in endovascular aortic repair: A computational study of their mechanical performance”

Rahul Sathish Vellaparambil, ESR 08 of the MeDiTATe project, published the paper titled Potential of auxetic designs in endovascular aortic repair: A computational study of their mechanical performance in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials.

The work was developed in collaboration with Woo-Suck Han and Stéphane Avril from Mines Saint-Étienne and Pierluigi Di Giovanni from the R&D department of  HSL.

The paper, whose abstract is reported in the following lines, Read More

28 November 2022

A new MeDiTATe project publication: A Hybrid Mock Circulatory Loop for Fluid Dynamic Characterization of 3D Anatomical Phantoms

Francesco Bardi, ESR 10 of the MeDiTATe project, published the paper titled A Hybrid Mock Circulatory Loop for Fluid Dynamic Characterization of 3D Anatomical Phantoms in the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering journal.

The work was developed in collaboration with Emanuele Gasparotti, Emanuele Vignali and Simona Celi from Bioengineering Unit (Fondazione Toscana G.Monasterio) and Stéphane Avril from Mines Saint-Étienne.

The paper, whose abstract is reported in the following lines, is available at this link.

This work presents the development of a Hybrid Mock Circulatory Loop (HMCL) to simulate hemodynamics at patient-specific level in terms of both 3D geometry and inlet/outlet boundary conditions. Methods: Clinical data have been processed to define the morphological and functional patient-specific settings. A piston pump is used to impose a parametric flow rate profile at the inlet of the hemodynamic circuit. In order to guarantee the physiological pressure and flow conditions, a specific hybrid chamber system including a real-time control has been designed and implemented. The developed system was validated firstly in a single outlet branch model and, secondly, on a 3D printed patient-specific multi-branch phantom. Finally, for the 3D phantom, the outlet flow profiles were compared with the corresponding in-vivo flow data. Results: Results showed that the root mean squared error between the prescribed setpoint and the measured pressures was always below 3 mmHg (about 2.5%) for all cases. The obtained flow profiles for the patient-specific model were in agreement with the related functional in-vivo data. Significance: The capability to reproduce physiological hemodynamics condition, with high-fidelity, plays a significant role in the cardiovascular research. The developed platform can be used to assess the performances of cardiovascular devices, to validate numerical simulations, and to test imaging systems.

13 October 2022

A new section for the MeDiTATe project website: discover the Publications area

A new section is now available on the MeDiTATe website. The page Publications groups all the papers currently published from the Early Stage Researchers in scientific journals.

The web page is available at the following link: https://meditate-project.eu/publications/.

The section can also be reached by clicking the Publication button on the website header, as shown in the presentation image.

1 September 2022

A new MeDiTATe Project publication: Towards the 2D velocity reconstruction in abdominal aorta from Color-Doppler Ultrasound

Maria Nicole Antonuccio, ESR 14 of the MeDiTATe project, published the paper titled Towards the 2D velocity reconstruction in abdominal aorta from Color-Doppler Ultrasound in Medical Engineering & Physics Journal.

The work was developed in collaboration with Hernan G. Morales, Alexandre This and Laurence Rouet from Philips Research Paris, Katia Capellini and Simona Celi from BioCardioLab (Fondazione Toscana G. Monasterio), Stéphane Avril from Mines Saint-Étienne.

The paper whose abstract is reported in the following lines, is available at this link.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the preferred modality to assess hemodynamics in healthy and diseased blood vessels. As an affordable and non-invasive alternative, Color-Doppler imaging is a good candidate. Nevertheless, Color-Doppler acquisitions provide only partial information on the blood velocity within the vessel. We present a framework to reconstruct 2D velocity fields in the aorta. We generated 2D Color-Doppler-like images from patient-specific Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models of abdominal aortas and evaluated the framework’s performance. The 2D velocity field reconstruction is based on the minimization of a cost function, in which the reconstructed velocities are constrained to satisfy fluid dynamics principles. The numerical evaluations show that the reconstructed vector flow fields agree with ground-truth velocities, with an average magnitude error of less than and an average angular error of less than . We lastly illustrate the 2D velocity field reconstructed from in-vivo Color-Doppler data. Observing the hemodynamics in patients is expected to have a clinical impact in assessing disease development and progression, such as abdominal aortic aneurysms.

8 August 2022

Latest publication in MeDiTATe project. EndoBeams.jl: A Julia finite element package for beam-to-surface contact problems in cardiovascular mechanics

Beatrice Bisighini, ESR 03 in the MeDiTATe project, published the paper titled EndoBeams.jl: A Julia finite element package for beam-to-surface contact problems in cardiovascular mechanics on Advances in Engineering Software journal.

The work was developed in collaboration with Miquel Aguirre, Baptiste Pierrat and Stéphane Avril from Mines Saint-Étienne and David Perrin from PrediSurge.

The paper, whose abstract is reported in the following lines, is available at this link.

The increasing use of mini-invasive and endovascular surgical techniques is at the origin of the pressing need for
computational models to support planning and training. Several implantable devices have a wire-like structure,
which can be modelled using beam elements. Our objective is to create an efficient Finite Element (FE) modelling
framework for such devices. For that, we developed the EndoBeams.jl package, written exclusively in Julia, for
the numerical simulation of contact interactions between wire-like structures and rigid surfaces. The package is
based on a 3D FE corotational formulation for frictional contact dynamics of beams. The rigid target surface is
described implicitly using a signed distance field, predefined in a volumetric grid. Since the main objective
behind this package is to find the best compromise between computational speed and code readability, the al-
gorithm, originally in Matlab, was translated and optimised in Julia, a programming language designed to
combine the performance of low-level languages with the productivity of high-level ones. To evaluate the
robustness, a set of tests were conducted to compare the simulation results and computational time of Endo-
Beams.jl against literature data, the original Matlab code and the commercial software Abaqus. The tests proved
the accuracy of the underlying beam-to-surface formulation and showed the drastic performance improvement of
the Julia code with respect to the original one. EndoBeams.jl is also slightly faster than Abaqus. Finally, as a proof
of concept in cardiovascular medicine, a further example is shown where the deployment of a braided stent is
simulated within an idealised artery.

3 August 2022

MeDiTATe project new publication. The Hemodynamic Effect of Modified Blalock–Taussig Shunt Morphologies: A Computational Analysis Based on Reduced Order Modeling

Eirini Kardampiki, ESR 12 in the MeDiTATe project, published the paper titled The Hemodynamic Effect of Modified Blalock–Taussig Shunt Morphologies: A Computational Analysis Based on Reduced Order Modeling on Electronics Journal from MDPI.

The work was developed in collaboration with Emanuele Vignali and Simona Celi from BioCardioLab (Fondazione Toscana G. Monasterio), Dorela Haxhiademi from Critical Care Unit (Fondazione Toscana G. Monasterio), Duccio Federici from Paediatric Cardiosurgery Unit (Fondazione Toscana G. Monasterio). A further contribution was given by Edoardo Ferrante, Margherita Cioffi and Emiliano Costa from RINA, Stefano Porziani and Andrea Chiappa from RBF Morph, Corrado Groth and Marco Evangelos Biancolini from the Department of Enterprise Engineering (University of Rome Tor Vergata).

The paper, whose abstract is reported in the following lines, is available at this link.

The Modified Blalock Taussig Shunt (MBTS) is one of the most common palliative operations in case of cyanotic heart diseases. Thus far, the decision on the position, size, and geometry of the implant relies on clinicians’ experience. In this paper, a Medical Digital Twin pipeline based on reduced order modeling is presented for fast and interactive evaluation of the hemodynamic parameters of MBTS. An infant case affected by complete pulmonary atresia was selected for this study. A three-dimensional digital model of the infant’s MBTS morphology was generated. A wide spectrum of MBTS geometries was explored by introducing twelve Radial Basis Function mesh modifiers. The combination of these modifiers allowed for analysis of various MBTS shapes. The final results proved the potential of the proposed approach for the investigation of significant hemodynamic features such as velocity, pressure, and wall shear stress as a function of the shunt’s morphology in real-time. In particular, it was demonstrated that the modifications of the MBTS morphology had a profound effect on the hemodynamic indices. The adoption of reduced models turned out to be a promising path to follow for MBTS numerical evaluation, with the potential to support patient-specific preoperative planning.

Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 859836
Email: meditate@uniroma2.eu
Privacy Settings
We use cookies to enhance your experience while using our website. If you are using our Services via a browser you can restrict, block or remove cookies through your web browser settings. We also use content and scripts from third parties that may use tracking technologies. You can selectively provide your consent below to allow such third party embeds. For complete information about the cookies we use, data we collect and how we process them, please check our Privacy Policy
Youtube
Consent to display content from - Youtube
Vimeo
Consent to display content from - Vimeo
Google Maps
Consent to display content from - Google
Save