This book originated as a senior design research project at the Colorado School of Mines. Michal Schafer took a very active interest in the acute aortic dissection after his surgical rotations, so we set this project up to investigate the biophysical aspects of aortic dissection and possible engineering perspectives to a treatment. This project lead to a number of options for treatment, and Michal's team is currently following up on one of these options with an engineering company. Since this was an undergraduate design course, the first goal of the course was to do a thorough review of the topic and current trends in treatment. This alone took almost a year. The students learned the basic cardiac anatomy, physiology, physics, and biology to be capable of understanding the literature and the science behind the acute aortic dissection. With all this investigation, it was only natural to combine the information into a book format to hand over to others who will work on the project in the future. Our hope is that this will lead to yearly updates of the book.