An Imaging-based 3-D Simulation of the Cervix and the Uterus to Investigate the Mechanical Function of the Cervix in a Pregnant Woman

Preterm delivery refers to the birth of a child with a gestational age of less than 37 weeks. Preterm labor is a complex process with several factors in which cervical failure plays a vital role in some patients. In most of the pregnancy, the proper cervical function is required to maintain the fetus in the uterus. Softness and shortness of the cervix are two main causes of preterm delivery.Despite decades of research in this area, it is still difficult to diagnose pregnancies at risk. Due to the complexity and inaccessibility of the delivery environment, it is difficult to measure some of the data, and this has caused the information from the pregnancyenvironment to be little and the predictions performed to be precise. In order to reduce physiological side effects, there is a need for simulating and study of pregnancy environment. For these reasons, there is a need for numerical modeling at the engineering level,to gain a better understanding of pregnancy environment and help reduce the side effects of this physiological phenomenon. Here, a 3D patient-specific model of the uterus, cervix and fetal membrane is build based on MR imaging in order to analyze the mechanical function of the uterus and cervix under physiological loading of pregnancy. The behavior of tissue deformation from stress, the geometry of theorgans and the interaction between the uterus, cervix and fetal membrane using the finite element method have been studied. The amount of stress obtained at the frontal part of the internal cervical os in the model, the part with the highest concentration of stress and strain, as predicted by previous studies is 5 KPa. This FE model can be used to predict cervical incompetency and prevent preterm birth using the biomechanical properties of the cervix in early days of pregnancy

کلیدواژه ها:

Biomechanics of Pregnancy ، Finite Element ، Cervical Insufficiency ، Preterm Birth ، Hyperelasticity