Guidewire path determination for intravascular applications.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Medical Device Simulation
• Computational Fluid Dynamics

Background:

• Vascular diseases are a leading cause of mortality, often requiring endovascular interventions.
• Accurate prediction of guidewire and catheter paths is crucial for successful endovascular procedures.
• Existing computational methods face challenges in achieving high accuracy and precision.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a new computational method for simulating guidewire and catheter navigation within blood vessels.
• To improve the accuracy and reliability of predicting device trajectories in endovascular interventions.
• To provide a simple, intuitive, and adaptable tool for physicians and researchers.

Main Methods:

• A novel method based on the equilibrium of forces to iteratively find the minimum energy configuration of the guidewire/catheter.
• Validation using physical phantoms with a 0.33 mm stainless steel guidewire.
• Comparison with existing relevant computational methods from the literature.

Main Results:

• Achieved Root Mean Square (RMS) errors of 0.30 mm (2D) and 0.97 mm (3D), representing <2% and <20% of the phantom's lumen diameter.
• Demonstrated superior performance compared to other benchmarked methods.
• Exhibited low variation (σ=0.03 mm) in results despite parameter variations, indicating robustness and ease of use.

Conclusions:

• The proposed physics-based simulation technique offers a significant advancement in predicting guidewire and catheter paths.
• The method's accuracy, robustness, and simplicity make it a valuable tool for endovascular procedure planning and research.
• Its foundation in basic physics principles ensures ease of learning and adaptation for clinical and research applications.