About Efstathios Stratakos

Host: Politecnico di Milano

In silico simulations at macro/meso scale of angioplasty with DCBs, focusing on the mechanical aspects at the balloon-vessel interface (WP3, WP4)

Efstathios Stratakos received the Integrated Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics from the University of Patras with a specialization in Biomechanics, Greece 2020. From 2018 until today he has worked as a research assistant, lab assistant, and biomedical engineer in the R&D department of a medical devices company.

His field of work and interest covers: computational modelling of angioplasty stents, angioplasty balloons and femoral hips for THA, development of 3D vessel replicas, stent reconstruction models, and medical devices development.

During his secondment at CBSET (September-October 2023) Stathis focused on developing techniques for studying the unfolding dynamics of the balloon during its free expansion. On this basis, he performed numerical simulations of balloon expansion to replicate the benchtop experiments and created digital twins of the DCB devices. In addition, he worked on developing semi-automated algorithms to detect the coating particles in SEM images of DCB-treated arteries. Furthermore, he performed uniaxial tensile tests on angioplasty balloons to deduce their material properties and uniaxial compression of DCBs on arterial endothelium to deduce the coating transfer efficacy for different pressure parameters.

Publications:

Stratakos E, Antonini L, Poletti G, Berti F, Tzafriri AR, Petrini L, Pennati G. Investigating Balloon-Vessel Contact Pressure Patterns in Angioplasty: In Silico Insights for Drug-Coated Balloons. Ann Biomed Eng. 2023 Sep 26. doi: 10.1007/s10439-023-03359-y. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37751027.