Mechanical thrombectomy (MT) treatment of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients typically involves use of stent retrievers or aspiration catheters alone or in combination. For in silico trials of AIS patients, it is crucial to incorporate the possibility of thrombus fragmentation during the intervention. This study focuses on two aspects of the thrombectomy simulation: i) Thrombus fragmentation on the basis of a failure model calibrated with experimental tests on clot analogs; ii) the combined stent-retriever and aspiration catheter MT procedure is modeled by adding both the proximal balloon guide catheter and the distal access catheter. The adopted failure criterion is based on maximum principal stress threshold value. If elements of the thrombus exceed this criterion during the retrieval simulation, then they are deleted from the calculation. Comparison with in-vitro tests indicates that the simulation correctly reproduces the procedures predicting thrombus fragmentation in the case of red blood cells rich thrombi, whereas non-fragmentation is predicted for fibrin-rich thrombi. Modeling of balloon guide catheter prevents clot fragments' embolization to further distal territories during MT procedure.

@en

Wave energy converters (WEC) are reaching a pinnacle in their prototype phase. World leaders in the energy sector are looking for renewable energy sources to replace the expiry of fossil-fuel energy capacity. For WECs to become a viable solution to the fossil-fuel challenges, there is a need to have a deeper understanding of the associated costs and the operational impacts of this technology. This study investigates the relationship between these two characteristics and finds an improved implementation strategy by developing a dynamic risk-based methodology. The methodology developed from this study will aid WEC technology to move towards a commercialised state by implementing an array or farm of WEC devices. Bayesian network (BN) is adopted to analyse the probability of a collision accident within the farm as well as the likelihood of meeting the desired level of power production. The BN is later extended to an influence diagram (ID) for selecting the optimum configuration of the WEC farm. The ID assists in decision-making based on the investigated probabilities, required capital investment, and economic impact of the accident scenario. To demonstrate the application of the developed method, a case study is adopted including three decision alternatives, each representing a farm with different layouts of point absorber WECs. The performance of the facility is assessed under real-life offshore environmental conditions. The developed methodology assists in finding the WEC layout which minimises the economic risk of an array implementation and also increases the reliability of these structures.@en