OPTIMIZATION OF CORONARY STENT STRUCTURE DESIGN FOR MAXIMIZING THE ANTI-COMPRESSION MECHANICAL PROPERTY

Excellent mechanical property of the anti-compression or high collapse pressure has become an essential feature of new coronary stents. How to determine the design parameters of stent becomes the key to improve the stent quality. An integrated approach using radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) and genetic algorithm (GA) for the optimization of anti-compression mechanical property of stent is presented in this paper. First, finite element simulation and RBFNN are used to map the complex non-linear relationship between the collapse pressure and stent design parameters. Then GA is employed with the fitness function based on an RBFNN model for arriving at optimum configuration of the stent by maximizing the collapse pressure. The results of numerical experiment demonstrate that the combination of RBFNN and GA is an effective approach for the mechanical properties optimization of stent.