Improving outcomes of aorta surgery by modeling Biomechanics and Hemodymanics

 

 

 

This project aims to understand the human aorta — the main pipeline transporting blood from heart to the body — when it has a disease and after the disease is treated. My project is focused on the particular disease called aortic dissection, which happens when the aortic wall gets damaged and separated into multiple layers. Untreated aortic dissection can lead to life-threatening condition such as internal bleeding, organ failure, and death. To protect the dissected aortic wall before it gets worse, surgeons put the implant called aortic graft — an artificial aorta made with fabric and metal wires — and take CT scans regularly to see if the aorta is getting worse or better. 

 

My project is extracting the important characteristics of the diseased aorta and aorta after surgery in short and long-term surveillance using the patients' CT images. In addition, I am simulating blood flow within the diseased aorta and aorta after surgery to see if there is visible relationship between the blood flow patterns and after-surgery recovery. We commonly assume that after surgery the dissected aorta will shrink its size and stop getting torn further, but in reality, this is not always happening. That's why this project is important, because we need better understanding about how the diseased aorta changes its shape after the aortic graft is placed after surgery. Knowing about this post-surgical phenomenon will help surgeons to make the informed decision when they plan for surgery to treat the patients with aortic dissection.

 

 

The answer is partially embedded in Q1 but there're further hopes. I would like to establish my academic identity as an active researcher who can be reached out when a vascular implant company tries to design the new device and needs insights from the real patient cases. Upon completion of this project, in research side, I would like to gain evidence of blood flow-driven shape changes of diseased aorta even after the aorta underwent surgery. This will help reducing surgical complications and more emphasis on post-surgical monitoring. If anyone I care and love undergoes this disease and has to get this surgery, I would love him/her to survive 10+ years without getting additional surgery. My research goal with this project and beyond is ultimately to help patients and their families to live their lives with less pain and healthcare costs.

 

 

Students who participate in this research will get to study the broad areas including medical imaging, image processing, computational fluid dynamics, and implant evaluation techniques. In R01 universities, research incorporating these kinds of topics is usually offered to PhD students. As I've been dedicated to undergraduate research in the past 5 years at CSULB, I will continue to provide opportunities to undergraduate students who are primarily interested in medical device industries or cardiovascular biomechanics research so that they can excel in their career and get exposed to the fast turnaround of surgical, radiological, and implant development.