Figure 3.

Idealized schematics of aortic strain confounders. A, The idealized aorta exhibits a positive taper similar to what was observed in this cohort and is displaced toward the heart under a constant pressure. The red cone represents the aorta at its initial location at end‐diastole and the clear cone represents the displaced aorta during systole. The cross‐sectional lumen area in the orthogonal image plane (dotted line) would appear larger even though the aorta (solid line) is unchanged. B, If an idealized aorta is stretched to 110% of its original length, its diameter will decrease by 5% under a constant pressure. The transparent cylinder represents the original aortic lumen dimensions, and the red cylinder represents the stretched aortic lumen dimensions. The dotted line represents the observed lumen area after stretching the original cylinder (solid line) longitudinally.