The relationship between wall shear stress distributions and intimal thickening in the human abdominal aorta

PurposeThe goal of this work was to determine wall shear stress (WSS) patterns in the human abdominal aorta and to compare these patterns to measurements of intimal thickness (IT) from autopsy samples.MethodsThe WSS was experimentally measured using the laser photochromic dye tracer technique in an anatomically faithful in vitro model based on CT scans of the abdominal aorta in a healthy 35-year-old subject. IT was quantified as a function of …