J022062 Developing of the stent

Abstract

We have been developing peripheral stent system which is intended to treat stenosed peripheral arteries. Generally, peripheral stent itself is made from a Ni-Ti alloy due to the characteristics of superelasticity and shape memory property. Recently some problems have become obvious . One of the problem is a stent fracture which is caused by metal fatigue. Various characteristics, such as bending, torsion, axial durability and radial force are required to overcome the stent fracture problem. On the other hand, it is difficult to keep all characteristics in a good balance because of the number of the design factors for the peripheral stent. We have adopted a finite element analysis to shorten the time for design optimization. Concequently we could cut down the design time and achieve several promising stent designs.We have also adopted the same method to develop a novel stent delivery system. We found that finite element analysis was the useful tool for developing stent system.