Multi-objective design optimisation of coronary stents

This study presents the first multi-objective and multi-disciplinary coronary stent design optimization study of its kind. Coronary stents are tubular, often mesh-.like, structures which are deployed in diseased (stenosed) artery segments to provide a scaffolding feature that keeps the arteries open (after the treatment of coronary artery disease). A novel three variable geometry parameterisation of a CYPHER (Cordis corp., Johnson & Johnson co.) type stent is proposed to explore the functionality of a sequence of circumferential rings connected by ‘n’ shaped links. The performance of each design is measured by six figures of merit (objectives/metrics) representing (i) acute recoil, (ii) tissue stresses, (iii) haemodynamic disturbance, (iv) drug delivery, (v) uniformity of drug distribution, and (vi) flexibility. These metrics are obtained from computational simulations of (i) structural deformation through balloon inflated expansion of a stent into contact with a stenosed vessel, (ii) pulsatile flow over the deformed stent embedded in the vessel wall, (iii) steady-state drug distribution into the tissue, and (iv) flexibility of a stent in response to an applied moment. Design improvement is obtained by a multi-objective surrogate modelling approach using a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) to search for an optimal family of designs. A number of trade-offs between the different objectives are identified. In particular a conflict between pairs of the following objectives are shown – (a) volume average stress vs recoil, (b) volume average drug vs. volume average stress, (c) flexibility vs volume average stress, (d) flexibility vs. haemodynamic disturbance, (e) volume average drug vs. haemodynamic disturbance, and (f) uniformity of drug vs. volume average stress. Different paradigms to choose the optimal designs from the obtained Pareto fronts are presented and under each such paradigm, the optimal designs and there relative positions with respect to a representative CYPHER stent are show