Abdominal aortic aneurysm and thrombus modeling

AAA disease, the local enlargement of the infrarenal aorta, is a serious condition that causes many deaths, especially in men exceeding 65years of age. Over the past quarter of a century, computational biomechanical models have been developed toward the assessment of AAA risk of rupture, technology that is now on the verge of being integrated within the clinical decision-making process. The modeling of AAA requires a holistic understanding of the clinical problem to set appropriate modeling assumptions and to draw sound conclusions from the simulation results. In this chapter, we summarize and critically discuss the state-of-the-art in AAA modeling, including the level of model validation. While most aspects concerning computational mechanics have already been settled, the exploration of the failure properties of the AAA wall and the acquisition of robust input data for simulations have the greatest potential for advancing this technology.