Wall Shear Stress-Based Hemodynamic Descriptors in the Abdominal Aorta Bifurcation: Analysis of a Case Study

The knowledge of hemodynamic behaviour in the abdominal aorta artery bifurcation is of great importance for the early diagnosis of several cardiovascular diseases common in this bifurcation. The work developed focuses on a case study of hemodynamic in the abdominal aorta artery bifurcation, based on a realistic 3D geometric model reconstructed from 2D medical images of a real patient. Hemodynamic quantities based on the wall shear stress (WSS) of the abdominal aorta bifurcation are analysed and is presented an alternative analysis of the well-established stress hemodynamic descriptors to identify specific zones of the artery with a higher probability of developing cardiovascular diseases. The individual analysis of different zones of the artery allowed to obtain information that can remain masked when whole artery is considered as a single zone. The reported results provide a correlation between the analysed stress hemodynamic descriptors and the area of the wall artery. Then, the aim of this work is the identification of regions at the luminal surface subject to atherosusceptible WSS phenotypes. For the patient studied, the analysis presented allowed the identification of the patient's propensity to develop atherosclerosis, according to the hemodynamic descriptors time-averaged WSS (TAWSS), oscillatory shear index (OSI), and relative residence time (RRT). Thus, this work offers a new way of looking to the stress hemodynamic descriptors.