Computational framework for generating transport models from databases of microvascular anatomy

Quantitative descriptions of transport and exchange in physiological systems should make use of the emerging wealth of data on vascular anatomic structure. These descriptions may take the form of computational models which then must be incorporated into the comprehensive database of knowledge of microcirculatory physiology being developed under the title, The Micro circulation Physiome Project. Toward this end we present a simple and efficient computational method for simulating transport (advection, permeation, diffusion) in tissues containing microvascular structures of arbitrary complexity. The method is convenient because transport is simulated on a regular Cartesian lattice, and efficient because features of the anatomy are resolved within individual volume elements of the lattice. As a result, relatively low-resolution lattices yield accurate results. Therefore the method provides a feasible approach for studying a general class of transport problems in the context of realistic representations of vascular anatomy. (C) 2001 Biomedical Engineering Society.