General model for cortical capillary networks and an investigation on pertinent functional reactivity to the different blood inflows

Abstract

The cerebrocortical capillary circulations are irregular, tortuous which leads to difficulties in measuring the pertinent hemodynamic parameters. To achieve such a task and better understand the functional response of terminal cerebrovascular beds to the different input flows, a generic computational model is required. The approach developed here is capable of simulating a cerebral capillary network of any part of the human cortex. The method for creating the geometrical structure of cortical capillary network is based on the Voronoi tessellation of randomly distributed set of points in which each edge represents a capillary segment. The morphometric data of the model have been tuned so that they fall in the range of the physiological data extracted from the human cortex. The pertinent hemodynamic parameters of the network model are computed by numerical simulation based on the nonlinear rheological laws. The results show the distribution of blood velocity, flow rate and hematocrit for the two different inflows in the rest condition and when one of the inlet flows is blocked. © 2010 International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.