A method for integrating finite element results in a surgical planning software for evaluating stent graft properties in endovascular surgery

Abdominal aortic reconstruction using a stent graft is used especially in high-risk patients. However, this procedure poses the risk of migration and leakage, which could require follow-up interventions. One approach that is being considered to reduce these post-operative complications, is the provision of a finite-element model for better evaluation of graft configurations with respect to maximum attainable fixing force and sealing potential, which aids vascular medicine specialists in graft selection. This article presents a method for integrating and evaluating the calculation results of a finite-element simulation in a planning software. The requirements an evaluation module has to meet were defined jointly with vascular medicine specialists. Based on this, relevant data from the ANSYS simulation software were exported using an APDL script and provided in the form of an application-specific plug-in using the C++ based Medical Interaction Imaging Toolkit (MITK) development environment. The module developed for evaluating FE results obtained within a surgical software enables user-controlled visualization of outcome variables that are relevant for planning and a selection of data for comparing multiple calculated graft variants.