P34 FLUID-STRUCTURE INTERACTION MODELLING FOR ANALYSING ADVANCED CORONARY ATHEROSCLEROTIC PLAQUE FORMATION IN TRANSGENIC HYPERLIPIDAEMIC MINIPIGS

Acknowledgements: This work is carried out under funding from the British Heart Foundation (P64744). Authors are grateful for the support provided by the British Heart Foundation.

Atherosclerotic plaques are the main cause of acute coronary syndromes. Interestingly, plaques tend to develop in arterial regions where shear stress due to blood flow is low and multi-directional. These specific disturbed blood flow profiles have been shown to correlate to regions of advanced atherosclerosis (Samady, Eshtehardi et al. 2011)¹. Further, in our previous study, we showed a causal relationship between disturbed blood flow and the development of advanced plaques, including thin cap fibroatheroma, in hypercholesterolemic minipigs (Pedrigi, Poulsen et al. 2015)². However, all of these investigations neglected the elasticity of the vessel wall (assuming a perfectly rigid wall), which may affect calculation of blood flow derived shear stress. In this study, a fluid-structure interaction model was developed to address these limitations. In this model, we reconstructed the coronary arteries from intravascular optical coherence tomography within hypercholesterolemic pigs. Our model predicted a higher prevalence of disturbed blood flow within atherosclerotic regions of the vessels and greater overlap between, particularly, low shear stress and histologically-defined advanced plaques. We also demonstrate changes in the mechanics (i.e., strain) of the atherosclerotic vessel that may additionally promote plaque progression.