PATIENT-SPECIFIC BIOFIDELIC HUMAN CORONARY ARTERY SURROGATES
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the number one killer for both men and women in the United States. To date, unavailability of human coronary arteries due to ethical and biosafety issues has not allowed for many experimental studies on understanding the pathophysiology of CAD. Also, patient-specific arterial blockage conditions are very difficult to estimate using 2D imaging, which prevents the development of effective surgical mitigation steps. Additionally, to date, a majority of stent surgery failures (over 50%), mainly attributed to poor stent design (such as an oversized stent causing local damage of arterial wall and subsequent growth of scar tissue through the stent leading to re-blocking the artery, or in-stent restenosis), are impossible to evaluate. In the current work, a methodology to fabricate patient-specific three-layer biofidelic coronary artery surrogates was developed. This novel method involves the generation of a true-scale MRI-based patient-specific 3D arterial lumen model, which is 3D printed. A four-part silicone material system is developed, which precisely mimics the nonlinear biomechanical behavior of arterial layers, namely the intima (innermost), media (middle) and adventitia (outer). Using the 3D printed arterial lumen model as a positive mold, thin layers ([Formula: see text][Formula: see text]mm) of the layer-specific silicone-based materials are deposited, and subsequently pulled out once cured. The final product is a three-layer coronary artery model which is exactly of the same size and dimensions, and similar mechanical property as that of the actual coronary artery of a patient. Such surrogate models would be extremely helpful for cardiologists and heart surgeons to understand patient-specific atherosclerotic conditions (based on the location and size of blockages), simulate CAD-based surgeries and also evaluate stent implantation procedures. Additionally, these coronary artery surrogate models will allow stent manufacturers to design better and more reliable stents in the future to avoid stent oversizing-based arterial damage conditions and improve stent deployment techniques.