Studies on design optimization of coronary stents

The stent design itself seems to be one of the factors responsible for restenosis. As a remedy, the present work attempts to perform a design optimization of coronary stents from a hemodynamic point of view. For the purpose, we have applied the principles of modern exploration of design space restricting ourselves to two-dimensional considerations. Width, thickness, and spacing of the struts of the stent formed the design variables. The objectives chosen for optimization were the vorticity generated, length of recirculation zone, and the reattachment distance in between the struts. Both semicircular and rectangular cross sections of stents were included. Starting with the range of design variables, sample stent cases were generated using Latin hypercube sampling. Objective functions were calculated for each of these by computing the two-dimensional flow using software FLUENT under the assumption of a steady, Newtonian flow considering a model stent with three struts. This was followed by Kriging to construct a response surface, which gives the relationship between the objectives and the design variables. The procedure gave nondominated fronts, which consist of optimized designs. Stents with minimum vorticity with minimum recirculation distance, and the ones with maximum reattachment length in between struts were generated. The procedure is capable of producing the optimum set of design variables to achieve the prescribed objectives.