**8. Conclusions**

The mathematical model has a large number of parameters and their values influence the plaque obtained. They can affect the volume of the substances that provide volume to the plaque and also its stenosis ratio. Therefore, the dependence of the model on the variation of its parameters was analysed. For that, a previous selection of the parameters to analyse was done, and those referred to geometrical parameters, initial concentrations, and material properties were discarded.

As can be seen in Section 6, the variation of the selected parameters carries important variations on the results, and in some cases, this variation can be greater than 100%.

*dLDL*, *dm*, *Cr*, *Sr*, *pss*, *Gr*, and *mr* are directly proportional to the change of substances volume (FC, SSMC, and collagen) and to the stenosis ratio, while *DLDL*,*<sup>w</sup>* = *DLDLox*,*w*, *Dm*,*<sup>w</sup>* = *D M*,*w*, *md*, *LDLox*,*r*, *nFC*, *dc*, *Cth c*,*w*, and *rapop* are inversely proportional.

In addition, it was noticed that a variation in foam cell volume results in more of a change in the plaque stenosis ratio than in the volume of synthetic smooth muscle cells or collagen, due to the larger volume.

For all of this, it could be interesting to study the vulnerability of plaque by changing the analysed parameters, knowing how each one of them affects the volume of foam cells, synthetic smooth muscle cells, and collagen fibre in the plaque.

**Author Contributions:** M.C., M.A.M. and E.P. conceived and designed the study; P.H.-L., M.C., M.A.M. and E.P. developed the mathematical model; P.H.-L. and M.C. conducted the computational implementation of the model and post-processing of the results; P.H.-L., M.C., M.A.M. and E.P. wrote, reviewed, and edited the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through research project PID2019-107517RB-I00; financial support was given to P. Hernández-López via gran<sup>t</sup> BES-2017-080239 and the regional Government of Aragón via research project T24-20R.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors gratefully acknowledge the research support from CIBER– Bioengineering, Biomaterials & Nanomedicne (CIBER-BBN at the University of Zaragoza). CIBER Actions are financed by Instituto de Salud Carlos III with assistance from the European Regional Development Fund.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
