R. Fumero

... Fabio Inzoli, Roberto Fumero, Francesco Migliavacca Dipartimento di Bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano, P.zza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 ... theories about the initiation, progression and complications of atherosclerosis as documented in Texon [1] and Fung [2]. Theoretical ...

Over the last twenty years major advancements have taken place in the design of medical devices and personalized therapies. They have paralleled the impressive evolution of three-dimensional, non invasive, medical imaging techniques and have been continuously fuelled by increasing computing power and the emergence of novel and sophisticated software tools. This paper aims to showcase a number of major contributions to the advancements of modeling of surgical and interventional procedures and to the design of life support systems. The selected examples will span from pediatric cardiac surgery procedures to valve and ventricle repair techniques, from stent design and endovascular procedures to life support systems and innovative ventilation techniques.

Dolphins have adapted their anatomic structures to survive in the water environment and so far, the behaviour of their respiratory system during diving has not been fully understood, since they being protected species cannot be subjected to invasive analysis. Aim of this work is to model the tracheo-bronchial tree of the bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus to study its behaviour during diving by coupling experimental in vitro mechanical characterisation of airways tissues to finite element computational analyses. Furthermore, a comparison was performed between the mechanical behaviour of tracheo-bronchial trees of dolphins and that of the goat, a terrestrial mammal, whose conformation of the upper airways is similar to that of the human, to determine how different structures respond to pressure in a controlled experimental set-up. The comparison between the goat and dolphin airways' mechanical behaviour highlights a lower collapsibility of the dolphin structure due to higher ...

To evaluate the role played by biomechanical and geometrical parameters of endoluminal thrombus and of aortic wall on abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) behaviour. Tensile tests on 21 AAA thrombus specimens from six patients undergoing AAA repair and numerical evaluation of aneurysmal aortic wall stress and strain distribution. Parameters of the analysis were lumen eccentricity, thrombus Young's Modulus and the aortic wall constitutive equation. There was a linear stress/strain for all the thrombus specimens. The numerical analyses show the mechanical behaviour of AAA as a function of lumen eccentricity and biomechanical parameters. Well organised thrombus reduces the effect of the pressure load on the aneurysmal aortic wall.