Background: The braided stent is a widely accepted endovascular treatment device consisting of woven metal wires. One of the unsolved issues for the braided stent is the stent flattening phenomena when deployed into highly curved arteries. Although a recent computational study highlighted that the mechanical state of the stent inside the catheter before the deployment plays an essential role in causing stent flattening, there is no experimental observation for the stent inside the curved catheter.
Objective: We investigated braided stent shapes in curved catheter tubes with various curvatures by micro-computed tomography (CT).
Methods: A braided stent was deployed into catheter tubes and set in rectangular cases with constant curvature. The three-dimensional shape of the stent was imaged by micro-CT, and its cross-sectional flatness was quantitatively assessed.
Results: Stent flattening occurred in cases of high curvatures of the outer side of the tube curvature, and the degree of flatness increased with increasing tube curvature. This demonstrates that stent flattening can be caused inside the highly curved catheter before deployment.
Conclusions: This preliminary and first observational report provides new insight into the mechanism of stent flattening and emphasizes the importance of the geometrical and mechanical state of the stent inside the catheter.
Keywords: Braided stent; cerebral aneurysm; endovascular treatment; micro-computed tomography (CT); stent flattening.