What is it about?
Stents are medical devices for improving blood flow but their effect on blood flow characteristics needs to be minimal in order to avoid disease. The stent pattern design is the key influence. We show how to find the best stent pattern designs by comparing two design optimisation methods. Defining the complex stent pattern is a challenge.
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Why is it important?
We show how to define a complex stent pattern for use in an efficient design search using Genetic Algorithms and Robust Engineering Design with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation models. In both approaches we include the principle of noise factor effects, specifically, the degree of stent embedding into the artery wall and the angle of flow entering the stent. This is important because CFD models are expensive to run and the number of design permutations is high.
Perspectives
It is interesting that Robust Engineering Design (RED) is more efficient than Genetic Algorithms (GA) for this problem but more importantly the designer knows the budget of RED experiments they are committing to up front, whereas the number of GA experiments is open-ended.
Dr Mark Atherton
Brunel University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Robust optimization of cardiovascular stents: a comparison of methods, Engineering Optimization, April 2004, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/03052150310001639290.
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