Mechanical properties of the porcine coronary artery

Knowledge of mechanical properties of living arteries isimportant to understand vascular function during health, disease andintervention. A mechanical model of the vascular tree would facilitatethe development of (balloon-)catheters and stents.We have developed an ex vivo model in which a porcinecoronary artery can be kept at physiological circumstances; hencecoronary pressure and flow, cyclic longitudinal elongation of thesegment, physiological wall shear stresses, etc. are controlled, whileenabling measurement of its mechanical behavior. Arterial mechanicalbehavior was determined for segments of the porcine left anteriordescending coronary artery (LAD, fig. 1a) by simultaneousmeasurement of pressure (P), diameter (D) and axial force (Fax) duringdynamic loading at different axial strains. Also, the physiological axialstrain of the LAD was determined, based on the hypothesis that: Thein vivo axial strain of an artery is the strain at which the axial force isrelatively insensitive to changes in pressure [1,2], as shown in figure1b.