A new method for the in vivo identification of mechanical properties in arteries from cine MRI images: theoretical framework and validation.

Alexandre Franquet (1, 2, 3, 4) , Stéphane Avril (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) , Rodolphe Le Riche (5, 6, 7, 8, 9) , Pierre Badel (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) , Fabien Schneider (10) , Zhi-Yong Li (11) , Chrisitan Boissier (12) , Jean-Pierre Favre (13)

1 CIS-ENSMSE - Centre Ingénierie et Santé
2 IFRESIS - Institut Fédératif de Recherche en Sciences et Ingénierie de la Santé
3 DB2M-ENSMSE - Département Biomécanique et Biomatériaux
4 STBio-ENSMSE - Surfaces et Tissus Biologiques
5 Mines Saint-Étienne MSE - École des Mines de Saint-Étienne
6 LIMOS - Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Modélisation et d'Optimisation des Systèmes
7 DEMO-ENSMSE - Département Décision en Entreprise : Modélisation, Optimisation
8 FAYOL-ENSMSE - Institut Henri Fayol
9 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
10 GRT - Groupe de recherche sur la thrombose, pharmacologie des antithrombotiques et situations à risque
11 SBSME - School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering
12 LMV - Laboratoire de Médecine Vasculaire
13 DCV - Département de Chirurgie Vasculaire

Quantifying the stiffness properties of soft tissues is essential for the diagnosis of many cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis. In these pathologies it is widely agreed that the arterial wall stiffness is an indicator of vulnerability. The present paper focuses on the carotid artery and proposes a new inversion methodology for deriving the stiffness properties of the wall from cine-MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) data. We address this problem by setting-up a cost function defined as the distance between the modeled pixel signals and the measured ones. Minimizing this cost function yields the unknown stiffness properties of both the arterial wall and the surrounding tissues. The sensitivity of the identified properties to various sources of uncertainty is studied. Validation of the method is performed on a rubber phantom. The elastic modulus identified using the developed methodology lies within a mean error of 9.6 %. It is then applied to two young healthy subjects as a proof of practical feasibility, with identified values of 625 kPa and 587 kPa for one of the carotid of each subject.

Mots clés: elasticity; artery; in vivo analysis.; in vivo analysis; inverse method; Finite elements; identification; mechanical properties

Domaines: Biomécanique [physics.med-ph]; Biomécanique [physics.med-ph]

Alexandre Franquet, Stéphane Avril, Rodolphe Le Riche, Pierre Badel, Fabien Schneider, et al.. A new method for the in vivo identification of mechanical properties in arteries from cine MRI images: theoretical framework and validation.. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 2013, 32 (8), pp.1448 - 1461. ⟨10.1109/TMI.2013.2257828⟩. ⟨hal-00805124⟩