基于虚拟场法的异质性动脉粥样硬化动脉材料表征

摘要(中文译文)

※ 中文译文由 AI 辅助生成,仅供学术参考,请以英文原文为准。

动脉中动脉粥样硬化斑块的破裂是危及生命的心血管事件的主要原因。斑块破裂与斑块内机械应力升高密切相关。由于斑块具有多组分构成导致的结构异质性，对斑块进行应力分析在改进斑块破裂风险评估、指导临床决策和手术规划方面具有重要潜力。然而，一个主要挑战在于高效且准确地表征斑块特定的力学属性。在本研究中，我们引入了一种基于虚拟场方法（VFM）的新框架，用于识别动脉粥样硬化斑块的异质材料属性。我们进一步提出了一种系统性策略，用于生成适用于受压管状结构（如动脉这一特定应用）的虚拟位移场（VDFs），并确定来自超声测量数据的颈动脉斑块所需的最佳VDF数量。所提出的框架在估计单个斑块组分的力学属性方面实现了高精度，即使在考虑超声数据中现实水平噪声的情况下也是如此。计算时间在临床前超声分辨率下为11 ± 2.5 s，在临床超声分辨率下为8.6 ± 2.3 s。这项工作首次实现了将VFM用于异质动脉粥样硬化斑块的材料表征。该框架的鲁棒性和计算效率为未来面向在体斑块表征的研究提供了方法学基础。

Abstract

Rupture of an atherosclerotic plaque in an artery is the primary cause of life-threatening cardiovascular events. Plaque rupture is closely associated with elevated mechanical stresses within the plaque. Stress analysis of plaques, which are structurally heterogeneous due to their multi-component composition, holds significant potential to improve the rupture risk assessment of plaques, guiding clinical decision making and surgical planning. A major challenge, however, lies in the efficient and accurate characterization of plaque-specific mechanical properties. In this study, we introduce a novel framework based on the Virtual Fields Method (VFM) to identify the heterogeneous material properties of atherosclerotic plaques. We further propose a systematic strategy to generate virtual displacement fields (VDFs) tailored for pressurized tubular structures, such as the specific application of arteries, and determine the optimal number of VDFs for carotid artery plaques from ultrasound-derived measurements. The proposed framework achieved high accuracy in estimating the mechanical properties of individual plaque components, even when realistic levels of noise in the ultrasound data were considered. The computation time was 11 ± 2.5 s for pre-clinical ultrasound resolution and 8.6 ± 2.3 s for clinical ultrasound resolution. This work presents the first implementation of VFM for the material characterization of heterogeneous atherosclerotic plaques. The robustness and computational efficiency of the framework provide a methodological basis for future studies toward in vivo plaque characterization.

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