A Nondestructive Diagnostic Modeling for Muscular Dysfunction of Human Pharynx Using Finite Element Method

Pharynx is an organ which transports food into the esophagus through peristaltic motion (repeat of contraction and expansion movement) and functions as an air passage. In this study, a structural change of human pharynx caused by muscular dysfunction is analyzed by a biomechanical model using CT and FEM(finite element method). For the biomechanical model, a loading condition is assumed so that equal internal pressure loaded sequentially to the inside of pharyngeal tissue. In order to analyze the pharyngeal muscular dysfunction by the biomechanical model, the pharyngeal dysfunctions are classified into 3 cases in the clinical complication by neuromuscular symptoms such as pharyngeal dysfunction after stroke. Those cases frequently show a change of material property and we investigated muscular tissue stiffness, deformation of cross sectional area of the pharynx by increasing the stiffness to 25%, 50%, 75% on the basis of stress-strain relationship of the pharyngeal tissue in each case. With three-dimensional reconstruction of pharyngeal structure using FEM and the optimization process by using inverse dynamic approach, the biomechanical model of the human pharynx is implemented and the muscular dysfunction is simulated.