Maarten Merkx1, Marcel van 't Veer2, Marcel Breeuwer3, Lambert Speelman4, Jaap Buth2, Frans van de Vosse1
1University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands; 2Catharina Hospital, Eindhoven, Netherlands; 3Philips Healthcare, Best, Netherlands; 4University Medical Center, Maastricht, Netherlands
An abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a life-threatening dilatation of the aorta. In clinical practice, the maximum transversal AAA diameter is used to assess its rupture risk and to decide whether or not surgical repair is required. There is however a strong indication that knowledge about the AAA wall stress can provide more accurate rupture-risk prediction than the maximum diameter. In recent years, we have developed a finite-element analysis methodology to derive the patient-specific AAA wall strain and stress from dynamic MRI acquisitions. In this paper, we describe how we have validated our finite-element calculations.