Aorta in vivo parameter identification using an axial force constraint.

It was shown in a previous study by Stålhand et al. (2004) that both material and residual strain parameters for an artery can be identified noninvasively from an in vivo clinical pressure-diameter measurement. The only constraints placed on the model parameters in this previous study was a set of simple box constraints. More advanced constraints can also be utilized, however. These constraints restrict the model parameters implicitly by demanding the state of the artery to behave in a specified way. It has been observed in vitro that the axial force is nearly invariant to the pressure at the physiological operation point. In this paper, we study the possibility to include this behaviour as a constraint in the parameter optimization. The method is tested on an in vivo obtained pressure-diameter cycle for a 24-year-old human. Presented results show that the constrained parameter identification procedure proposed here can be used to obtain good results, and we believe that it may be applied to account for other observed behaviours as well.