Abstract
Ischemic Stroke is the most frequent type of stroke and is subject to many studies investigating prevention means. Avoiding the difficulties and ethical problems of experimental in-vivo research, in-vitro testing is a convenient way of studying in controlled conditions the morphological impact and mechanical aspects of emboli dynamics. This in-vitro study was performed with two realistic silicone aortic-arch phantoms submitted to physiological pulsatile flow conditions. In the in-vitro test bed, using automatic image tracking and analysis, it was made possible detecting and tracking artificial spherical emboli candidates circulating in the anatomic aortic-arch models under a realistic based-patient blood flow profile. The emboli trajectories as well as their repartition in the different supra-aortic branches are presented for the two aortic-arch geometries obtained from CT scans. Through a statistical analysis performed with several artificial emboli sizes, the experimental study shows that the repartition percentages of the emboli closely follow the flowrate repartition percentages for both aortic-arch models, suggesting that higher flowrates lead to higher concentrations of emboli in a given artery. Sets of human thrombi were also injected and the repartition percentages have been established, giving the same trend as for artificial emboli.
Specification testing in nonparametric AR‐ARCH models