Biomechanics of the Main Artery in the Lower Limb

Despite years of technological and pharmacological improvements, failure rates remain high for the lower extremity peripheral arterial disease repairs, particularly when the repair devices cross the knee joint. Though much work has been done investigating the pathological processes associated with this failure, the underlying mechanisms remain insufficiently understood. The main arterial segment within the leg, the femoropopliteal artery, appears to be significantly different from other peripheral arteries, possibly due to lower blood flow, but more importantly, because it experiences large deformations during flexion of the limbs. Understanding the magnitude of these deformations in different postures and arterial segments may help improve the design of repair devices through computational studies of device-artery interactions. These studies rely on comprehensive assessments of arterial mechanics and structure and call for innovative ways of accounting for patient demographics and risk factors to deliver realistic results. In this chapter, we will summarize our recent findings related to the quantification of the biomechanical environment of the lower limb arteries, describe their structure and mechanical properties in the context of age, and propose a computational framework to evaluate device-artery interactions while accounting for the surrounding tissue effects. We will finish by identifying several future directions for this research.