Patient-Specific Vascular Modeling - Microsurgery: Advances, Simulations, and Applications - page 88

endovascular intervention. Its rigidity restricts vascular deformation
against medical treatment and blood streaming, and consequently
limiting its applicability and reproducibility. From this reason, we
propose an individual cerebral arterial model reproduced with
elastic membranous coniguration of vasculature and the physical
characteristics of arterial tissue, expanding its potential for
simulating endovascular intervention.
In this modeling, we reconstructed the three-dimensional
structure of basilar artery with giant aneurysm with an approximate
diameter of 15 mm by the hybrid method that combines multi-slice
CT information (resolution: 0.3 mm/pixel, slicing pitch: 0.5 mm)
and MRI information (resolution: 0.48 mm/pixel, slicing pitch: 0.7
mm) . Then we rapid-prototyped a vascular master mold using this
information. In this procedure, we coated the RP master mold with
the silicone elastomer. In this process, we fabricated a uniform thin
membranous structure of 100 μ m thickness by dipping the master
mold in liquid-state silicone and drawing it up at constant velocity (1.0
mm/sec). We repeated this dipping, which is followed by additional
polymerization until it attains the desired wall thickness. In this
representative case, it yielded thin silicone membrane with uniform
300 μ m thickness around the master mold. After the membrane was
materialized, inward RP master mold was eliminated. In this way,
we fabricated an in vitro patient-speciic anatomical model of the
human cerebral artery with a biologically accurate membranous
coniguration (Fig. 3.10).
2 0 m m
Figure 3.10 In vitro patient-speciic anatomical model of the cerebral artery
reproduced with a membranous coniguration for simulating
endovascular intervention.