Mechanics in Medicine Forum

I believe that questions Zhigang raised today worth discussing as a topic within this forum.  I will start and please comment.

The traditional roles of mechanics in the medical implant industry is to ensure safety through reliability assessment and to prove functionality through in-vitro testing.

Things are changing, in mid-90s, Charley Taylor and his colleagues pioneered "predictive medicine" and "simulation-based medical planning" in which they uses CFD to help making surgical decisions.  Professor Taylor's research in "predictive medicine" and "simulation-based medical planning" has been featured on several television and radio programs including Quantum, Beyond 2000, New Media News, and The Osgood Files and has appeared in Discover, Mechanical Engineering, Technology Review and The Scientist magazines. (statement directly from his web site).  Mechanics goes into the prediction of medicine performances.

Stent and Nitinol have revolutionized the medicine.  In past decades, guidewires, stents, filters and many minimumly invasive devices and implants are made of Nitinol and they proved to be very successful.

However, the fatigue behavior of Nitinol has not been well understood.  As a consequences, many stent fractures have been observed in-vivo.  Below is a list of misconcepts that may contribute to the widely observed in-vivo fractures on Nitinol stents: