Patient-Specific Physical and Computational Models for Replicating Coronary Stent Deployment

Percutaneous coronary intervention with balloon angioplasty and stent implantation is standard therapy for coronary artery disease, but accurate prediction of patient-specific procedural outcomes remains challenging.

Patient-derived imaging data were used to reconstruct three-dimensional coronary models, which were further translated into a three-dimensional-printed physical phantom and a finite element digital twin. The identical stent and balloon were deployed in the phantom; stent deployment was computationally simulated, and both were compared with the clinical optical coherence tomography.

Both platforms reproduced key procedural features. The phantom moderately underestimated, and the finite element model overestimated, the clinically observed lumen gain. These proof-of-concept findings support the technical feasibility of building patient-specific artificial twins, but quantitative accuracy will require further model refinement and validation before clinical use.

Patient-specific models offer a means to visualize procedural characteristics and test alternative stent designs or deployment strategies outside the patient.