#2: Mini Symposium: Vulnerable Plaque Biomechanics and Clinical Applications

Professor Dalin Tang, Worcester Polytechnic Institute 

Dr. Liang Wang, Southeast University

Professor Jacques Ohayon, University Savoie Mont-Blanc

Summary: This symposium aims to bring together experts across the range of engineering science disciplines to discuss the state-of-the-art in development of vulnerable plaque biomechanics and its clinical application. Atherosclerotic plaque development and rupture are closely associated the plaque mechanical conditions, including hemodynamics and structural mechanics. These mechanical conditions have the potential to improve the assessment the vulnerable plaque and forecasting adverse major cardiovascular events with integration of plaque morphology from multiple non-invasive or invasive imaging technologies. The symposium will highlight the experimental and computational techniques in the vulnerable plaque biomechanical research, and the influence of biomechanics in clinical patient-screening, diagnosis and intervention for atherosclerosis-related cardiovascular diseases.

Topics will include but not be limited to:
• Computational simulation for plaque biomechanics;
• Experimental investigation for plaque material properties and biomechanics;
• Clinical Application for plaque biomechanics;
• Image-based modeling and numerical technologies;

Keywords: Vulnerable Plaque, Biomechanics, Clinical Application.

#10 Mini-symposium: The "Virtual Biopsy" and Biomechanics: How Biomechanical Information Can Be Used to Image and Measure Tissue Properties In Vivo

Frederick Silver, Department of Pathology, RWJMS, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Summary: Cancer cells and cancerous tissue have been shown to be characterized by altered stiffnesses in vitro using a number of different approaches. We have developed a technique to make virtual biopsies of tissues and elastic modulus measurements on normal skin and benign and malignant skin lesions. The technique involves use of optical coherence tomography and vibrational analysis to image and measure the resonant frequency of tissues based on the displacement of a tissue during transverse deformation in vivo. The image is made using near-infrared light and the transverse vibrations are achieved by applying a sinosoidal sound wave perpendicular to the tissue surface at a fixed wavelength. The resonant frequency is defined as the frequency of applied sound that causes the tissue displacement to be at a maximum. Our initial results suggest that the type and malignancy of a lesion can be defined by the cellular resonant frequency, the collagen modulus, the peak heights and widths.

Keywords: experimental methods, clinical applications, cardiovascular biomechanics, imaging, device biomechanics, multi-scale biomechanics, tissue biomechanics