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Zhou Q, Schirrmann K, Doman E, Chen Q, Singh N, Selvaganapathy PR, Bernabeu MO, Jensen OE, Juel A, Chernyavsky IL, Krüger T. Red blood cell dynamics in extravascular biological tissues modelled as canonical disordered porous media. Interface Focus 2022; 12:20220037. [PMID: 36325194 PMCID: PMC9560785 DOI: 10.1098/rsfs.2022.0037] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2022] [Accepted: 09/07/2022] [Indexed: 12/17/2022] Open
Abstract
The dynamics of blood flow in the smallest vessels and passages of the human body, where the cellular character of blood becomes prominent, plays a dominant role in the transport and exchange of solutes. Recent studies have revealed that the microhaemodynamics of a vascular network is underpinned by its interconnected structure, and certain structural alterations such as capillary dilation and blockage can substantially change blood flow patterns. However, for extravascular media with disordered microstructure (e.g. the porous intervillous space in the placenta), it remains unclear how the medium’s structure affects the haemodynamics. Here, we simulate cellular blood flow in simple models of canonical porous media representative of extravascular biological tissue, with corroborative microfluidic experiments performed for validation purposes. For the media considered here, we observe three main effects: first, the relative apparent viscosity of blood increases with the structural disorder of the medium; second, the presence of red blood cells (RBCs) dynamically alters the flow distribution in the medium; third, symmetry breaking introduced by moderate structural disorder can promote more homogeneous distribution of RBCs. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the cell-scale haemodynamics that mediates the relationship linking the function of certain biological tissues to their microstructure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qi Zhou
- School of Engineering, Institute for Multiscale Thermofluids, Edinburgh, UK
| | - Kerstin Schirrmann
- Manchester Centre for Nonlinear Dynamics, Manchester, UK
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Eleanor Doman
- Department of Mathematics, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Qi Chen
- Manchester Centre for Nonlinear Dynamics, Manchester, UK
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Naval Singh
- Manchester Centre for Nonlinear Dynamics, Manchester, UK
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - P. Ravi Selvaganapathy
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Biomedical Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
| | - Miguel O. Bernabeu
- Centre for Medical Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
- The Bayes Centre, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
| | - Oliver E. Jensen
- Department of Mathematics, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Anne Juel
- Manchester Centre for Nonlinear Dynamics, Manchester, UK
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Igor L. Chernyavsky
- Department of Mathematics, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
- Maternal and Fetal Health Research Centre, School of Medical Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Timm Krüger
- School of Engineering, Institute for Multiscale Thermofluids, Edinburgh, UK
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