Vascular Biomechanics in Traumatic Brain Injury

创伤性脑损伤是导致死亡和残疾的主要原因，并经常与脑血管衰竭有关。然而，人们对这些血管的生物力学知之甚少。这项研究的长期目标是确定脑血管对大脑机械反应的贡献，并开发更有效的工具和策略来预防创伤性脑损伤。我们小组最近的工作定义了人脑动脉和静脉的纵向机械特性。包含这些数据的初步有限元模型表明，脑血管限制了大脑变形。这一建议的中心假设是脑血管和 周围的软脑膜-蛛网膜复合体是导致脑组织变形和衰竭的重要因素。为了检验这一假设，本文提出了三个目标。目标1将描绘脑血管分支点的力学行为，以确定它们是否比未分叉的部分更容易变形和破坏。目的2研究软脑膜-蛛网膜复合体的力学行为，以确定其对脑血管反应和失效的影响。目标3将通过物理和数值建模来定义分支血管附近的组织变形，以确定分支血管结构 与直血管节段相比，对周围脑组织提供了额外的约束。这项拟议的研究应该提供关于脑血管和软脑膜-蛛网膜复合体对脑组织变形和衰竭的影响的明确数据。如果这些结构如预期的那样被证明是重要的，那么将它们包括在更具临床相关性的有限元模型中可能会导致更有效的损伤保护系统，并为改善创伤性脑损伤的预防和预后铺平道路。

Traumatic brain injury is a major cause of death and disability and is frequently associated with the failure of cerebral blood vessels. However, little is known about the biomechanics of these vessels. The long-term goal of this research is to determine the contribution of the cerebral blood vessels to the mechanical response of the brain and to develop more effective tools and strategies for the prevention of traumatic brain injury. Recent work by our group has defined the longitudinal mechanical properties of human cerebral arteries and veins. A preliminary finite element model incorporating these data suggests that the cerebral blood vessels constrain brain deformations. The central hypothesis of this proposal is that the cerebral blood vessels and the surrounding pia-arachnoid complex significantly contribute to brain tissue deformation and failure. Three aims are proposed to test this hypothesis. Aim 1 will delineate the mechanical behavior of cerebral vessel branch points to determine if they are more susceptible to deformation and failure than unbranched sections. Aim 2 will characterize the mechanical behavior of the pia-arachnoid complex to determine its influence on cerebral vessel response and failure. Aim 3 will define tissue deformations in the proximity of a branched blood vessel through both physical and numerical modeling to determine if branched vessel structure provides additional constraint to surrounding brain tissue in comparison to straight vessel segments alone. The proposed research should provide definitive data regarding the influence of cerebral blood vessels and the pia-arachnoid complex on brain tissue deformation and failure. If these structures are proven to be important, as anticipated, their inclusion in a more clinically relevant finite element model could lead to more effective injury protection systems and pave the way for improved prevention and outcome of traumatic brain injury.