Atherosclerosis at the early stage in coronary arteries has been associated with low cycle-average wall shear stress magnitude. However, parallel to the identification of an established active role for low wall shear stress in the onset/progression of the atherosclerotic disease, a weak association between lesions localization and low/oscillatory wall shear stress has been observed. In the attempt to fully identify the wall shear stress phenotype triggering early atherosclerosis in coronary arteries, this exploratory study aims at enriching the characterization of wall shear stress emerging features combining correlation-based analysis and complex networks theory with computational hemodynamics. The final goal is the characterization of the spatiotemporal and topological heterogeneity of wall shear stress waveforms along the cardiac cycle. In detail, here time-histories of wall shear stress magnitude and wall shear stress projection along the main flow direction and orthogonal to it (a measure of wall shear stress multidirectionality) are analyzed in a representative dataset of 10 left anterior descending pig coronary artery computational hemodynamics models. Among the main findings, we report that the proposed analysis quantitatively demonstrates that the model-specific inlet flow-rate shapes wall shear stress time-histories. Moreover, it emerges that a combined effect of low wall shear stress magnitude and of the shape of the wall shear stress–based descriptors time-histories could trigger atherosclerosis at its earliest stage. The findings of this work suggest for new experiments to provide a clearer determination of the wall shear stress phenotype which is at the basis of the so-called arterial hemodynamic risk hypothesis in coronary arteries.

冠状动脉早期的动脉粥样硬化与低周期平均壁剪切应力大小有关。然而，与确定低壁剪切应力在动脉粥样硬化疾病的发生/进展中的积极作用平行，已观察到病变定位与低/振荡壁剪切应力之间的弱关联。为了充分识别引发冠状动脉早期动脉粥样硬化的壁面剪应力表型，这项探索性研究旨在将基于相关性的分析和复杂网络理论与计算血流动力学相结合，丰富壁面剪应力新兴特征的表征。最终目标是表征沿心动周期的壁剪切应力波形的时空和拓扑异质性。详细地，这里分析了沿主要流动方向和与其正交的壁剪应力大小和壁剪应力投影的时间历程（壁剪应力多方向性的度量）在 10 个左前降支猪冠状动脉计算的代表性数据集中进行了分析。血流动力学模型。在主要发现中，我们报告说，所提出的分析定量地证明了特定于模型的入口流速塑造了壁面剪应力时程。此外，出现了低壁剪切应力大小和基于壁剪切应力的描述符时间历史的形状的组合效应可能在其最早阶段引发动脉粥样硬化。