Macromolecular Transport in Arterial Walls: Current and Future Directions

Abstract

The transport phenomena in porous media have generated increasing interest over the past several decades owing to the importance of porous media in diverse fields such as biotechnology, living structures, chemical and environmental engineering, etc. Particularly, significant advances have been achieved in applying porous media theory in modeling biomedical applications. Examples include computational biology, tissue replacement production, drug delivery, advanced medical imaging, porous scaffolds for tissue engineering and effective tissue replacement to alleviate organ shortages, and transport in biological tissues. Another important application of porous media includes diffusion process in the extracellular space (ECS) which is crucial for investigating central nervous system physiology. In this chapter, three applications namely brain aneurysm, flow and heat transfer in biological tissues, and porous scaffolds for tissue engineering are analyzed as related to the advances in porous media theory in biological applications.