Modeling of saccular aneurysm growth in a human middle cerebral artery

Saccular aneurysm growth in a human middle cerebral artery is modeled. The aneurysm growth model was presented in a companion paper by Kroon and Holzapfel ("A Model for Saccular Cerebral Aneurysm Growth by Collagen Fibre Remodelling," J. Theor. Biol., in press) and was assessed there for axisymmetric growth. The aneurysm growth model is now evaluated for a more realistic setting. The middle cerebral artery is modeled as a two-layered cylinder, where the layers correspond to the media and the adventitia. An instant loss of the media in a region of the artery wall initiates the growth of the saccular aneurysm. The aneurysm wall is assumed to be a development of the adventitia of the original healthy artery, and collagen is assumed to be the only load-bearing constituent in the adventitia and in the aneurysm wall. The collagen is organized in a number of distinct layers where fibers in a specific layer are perfectly aligned in a certain fiber direction. The production of new collagen is taken to depend on the stretching of the aneurysm wall, and the continuous remodeling of the collagen fibers is responsible for the aneurysm growth. The general behavior of the growth model is investigated and also the influence of the structural organization of the collagen fabric. The analysis underlines the fact that the material behavior of aneurysmal tissue cannot be expected to be isotropic. The model predictions agree well with clinical and experimental results, for example, in terms of aneurysm size and shape, wall stress levels, and wall thickness.