• aneurysms of thoracic aorta
• ct gated
• images analysis
• aortic stiffness

The analysis of mechanobiology of aortic tissues is a relevant topic of research for cardiovascular pathologies evaluation, like aneurysms. Experimental tests remain the gold standard to characterize the tissue mechanical behavior, but they require the harvesting of ex-vivo specimens. The objective of this thesis work is to assess the stiffness of aortic tissue through the analysis of ECG- gated CT imaging datasets. Two patient-specific datasets at different phases were segmented first and the corresponding centerlines were calculated to obtain the aortic structure including ascending, descending aorta and epiaortic vessels. A stiffness estimation algorithm was then imposed to define the strain, from sectional contour length ratio calculation, stress, from Laplace hypothesis, and stiffness, from constitutive equation assumptions. The workflow uses the centerline information to provide a slice-by-slice analysis of the aorta. The algorithm was modified to extend the analysis to the whole aorta structure, including epiaortic vessels. Additionally, the code was farther improved to go beyond the slice-by-slice information and to allow the analysis of strain along the circumferential direction as well by dividing the section in angular sectors. At last, sensitivity analyses on the algorithm were carried out by modifying the slice thickness and the angular threshold for the sector analysis. The most suitable algorithm parameters were chosen to provide the final analysis on the two patient specific cases.