A computational program for automated surgical planning of fenestrated endovascular repair

Abstract

An Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) is a dilation of the aorta at the level of the abdomen. To reduce the risk of rupture, an endograft is often implanted inside the aneurysm to decrease pressure on the aneurysm sac. To maintain blood flow to major abdominal vessels, a fenestrated endograft can be used, whereby physicians modify commercial endografts by creating fenestrations based on preoperative computed tomography imaging. The manual process of aligning patient-specific visceral anatomy onto endografts can be tedious and subject to human error. Here we developed a computational program, ‘FenFit’, for automated fitting of fenestrations onto commercially available endografts. A pilot clinical study was conducted to evaluate the efficiency of FenFit compared to physician manual planning, showing FenFit can reduce planning time by 62-fold on average. Our program has potential to improve clinical outcomes by providing a user interface that is expeditious and far less susceptible to human error.

Liquid-shaped microlens for scalable production of ultrahigh-resolution optical coherence tomography microendoscope

“…Currently, the accurate assessment of high-risk arterial diseases, such as atherosclerosis 40 , 41 , in small vessels remains challenging due to their narrow lumens, highly complex networks, and vast distribution 42 . Thus, a flexible microendoscope that allows for minimally invasive and ultrahigh-resolution imaging in small blood vessels is highly desirable.…”