Resonant stents for non-invasive monitoring of restenosis

Stents are widely used to maintain vessel patency after dilating a stenosed vessel (angioplasty). However, restenosis may occur post stent placement after weeks or months. Therefore it is necessary to monitor the patency of the stent. Non-invasive imaging methods such as CT, echocardiography, or MRI perform poorly in the detection of in-stent restenosis. As a solution of this problem a novel stent design with resonant behaviour is suggested in this paper. The resonant stent is detuned if restenosis develops. First simulations are presented and requirements for an optimization of the design are discussed.