| Guidewires are used frequently in minimally invasive endovascular interventions. To facilitate the clincian's device decision process prior to the intervention, it is important to know the approximate path the guidewire will take through the vasculature. A number of subjects inserted guidewires of different materials through three phantoms. It was found that the guidewire paths were very similar, having a general agreement on average of about 0.2 mm for a plastic-coated guidewire and of about 0.5 mm for a steel guidewire.; The procedure to simulate the guidewire path constructs a graph representing all possible guidewire paths and makes use of shortest path algorithms (i.e., Dijkstra's Algorithm) to identify the guidewire path which corresponds to the minimal internal energy. It was found that the calculated path agreed well, about 1 mm on average (∼20% of the vessel diameter), with the paths of the actual guidewires. The achieved close proximity is critical to allow application in a clinical setting. |
