Growth-driven mechanical buckling as a mechanism of age-related tortuosity in human cerebral arteries

Growth-driven buckling in a constrained model cerebral artery predicts wavelength scaling with diameter, matching MRI-derived cerebral arterial centerlines in healthy adults.

• Why it matters: Age-related cerebral arterial tortuosity is observed, but the mechanical mechanism setting bend spacing is not well explained.
• What they did: A slender elastic vessel in tissue support was elongated under fixed end distance, producing pre-buckling compression and post-buckling wave growth; 3D MRI centerlines from healthy adults tested wavelength versus diameter and age links.
• The result: Older adults showed greater arterial length and excess-length ratio, and for waves mostly parallel to the brain surface, wavelength increased with vessel diameter with a wavelength-to-diameter ratio consistent with predictions, while wave amplitude was not significantly associated with age.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.