Rapid prototyping of silicone-based phantom models for stent simulation validation

Abstract

Robust and reliable development of stent designs and materials is an important aspect for medical device manufacturing in relation to procedures such as Transcatheter Aortic-Valve Implantation. It is essential to perform a variety of experiments at an early stage of this process to define suitable material requirements and stent geometry. Mechanical simulation of realistic use case scenarios is a cost and time effective approach to optimize this task. In silico experiments can assist the device development phase and successively support patient-specific procedure planning. To establish confidence in the predictive power of in silico models and the corresponding simulation results, we therefore present a validation framework for stenting simulations. Our workflow allows the comparison of finite element analysis with actual mechanical response tests using optical tracking of stent deformation in artificial vessel phantom models. The results indicate that stent and vessel deformation can be analysed and validated across well-defined tissue properties within the presented framework.