No Arabic abstract
Bubbles introduced to the arterial circulation during invasive medical procedures can have devastating consequences for brain function but their effects are currently difficult to quantify. Here we present a Monte-Carlo simulation investigating the impact of gas bubbles on cerebral blood flow. For the first time, this model includes realistic adhesion forces, bubble deformation, fluid dynamical considerations, and bubble dissolution. This allows investigation of the effects of buoyancy, solubility, and blood pressure on embolus clearance. Our results illustrate that blockages depend on several factors, including the number and size distribution of incident emboli, dissolution time and blood pressure. We found it essential to model the deformation of bubbles to avoid overestimation of arterial obstruction. Incorporation of buoyancy effects within our model slightly reduced the overall level of obstruction but did not decrease embolus clearance times. We found that higher blood pressures generate lower levels of obstruction and improve embolus clearance. Finally, we demonstrate the effects of gas solubility and discuss potential clinical applications of the model.
We tested the hypothesis that simple exercises may significantly increase cerebral blood flow (CBF) and/or cerebral oxygenation. Eighteen subjects ranging in age from nineteen to thirty nine participated in a four-stage study during which measurements of end tidal CO_2 (EtCO2 - by capnometer) and local brain oxygenation (by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) sensor) were taken. The four stages were 1) baseline, 2) breathing exercises, 3) solving an arithmetic problem, and 4) biofeedback. During the breathing exercises there was a significant increase in EtCO2 indicating a significant increase in global CBF. The increase in global CBF was estimated on the basis of a theoretical model. During the arithmetic and biofeedback tasks there was a significant increase in the local (Fp1) oxygenation, but it varied between the different participants. The results may lead to new clinical applications of CBF and brain oxygenation monitoring and behavioral control. We foresee future more detailed investigations in the control of CO2 in brain circulation in specific regions of the brain involved in cognition and memory.
Infrared light scattering methods have been developed and employed to non-invasively monitor human cerebral blood flow (CBF). However, the number of reflected photons that interact with the brain is low when detecting blood flow in deep tissue. To tackle this photon-starved problem, we present and demonstrate the idea of interferometric speckle visibility spectroscopy (ISVS). In ISVS, an interferometric detection scheme is used to boost the weak signal light. The blood flow dynamics are inferred from the speckle statistics of a single frame speckle pattern. We experimentally demonstrated the improvement of measurement fidelity by introducing interferometric detection when the signal photon number is insufficient. We apply the ISVS system to monitor the human CBF in situations where the light intensity is $sim$100-fold less than that in common diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) implementations. Due to the large number of pixels ($sim 2times 10^5$) used to capture light in the ISVS system, we are able to collect a similar number of photons within one exposure time as in normal DCS implementations. Our system operates at a sampling rate of 100 Hz. At the exposure time of 2 ms, the average signal photon electron number is $sim$0.95 count/pixel, yielding a single pixel interferometric measurement signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of $sim$0.97. The total $sim 2times 10^5$ pixels provide an expected overall SNR of 436. We successfully demonstrate that the ISVS system is able to monitor the human brain pulsatile blood flow, as well as the blood flow change when a human subject is doing a breath holding task.
The microvascular networks in the body of vertebrates consist of the smallest vessels such as arterioles, capillaries, and venules. The flow of RBCs through these networks ensures the gas exchange in as well as the transport of nutrients to the tissues. Any alterations in this blood flow may have severe implications on the health state. Since the vessels in these networks obey dimensions similar to the diameter of RBCs, dynamic effects on the cellular scale play a key role. The steady progression in the numerical modeling of RBCs, even in complex networks, has led to novel findings in the field of hemodynamics, especially concerning the impact and the dynamics of lingering events, when a cell meets a branch of the network. However, these results are yet to be matched by a detailed analysis of the lingering experiments in vivo. To quantify this lingering effect in in vivo experiments, this study analyzes branching vessels in the microvasculature of Syrian golden hamsters via intravital microscopy and the use of an implanted dorsal skinfold chamber. It also presents a detailed analysis of these lingering effects of cells at the apex of bifurcating vessels, affecting the temporal distribution of cell-free areas of blood flow in the branches, even causing a partial blockage in severe cases.
Using a multiscale blood flow solver, the complete diffusion tensor of nanoparticle (NP) in sheared cellular blood flow is calculated over a wide range of shear rate and haematocrit. In the short-time regime, NPs exhibit anomalous dispersive behaviors under high shear and high haematocrit due to the transient elongation and alignment of the red blood cells (RBCs). In the long-time regime, the NP diffusion tensor features high anisotropy. Particularly, there exists a critical shear rate ($sim$100 $s^{-1}$) around which the shear-rate dependence of the diffusivity tensor changes from linear to nonlinear scale. Above the critical shear rate, the cross-stream diffusivity terms vary sublinearly with shear rate, while the longitudinal term varies superlinearly. The dependence on haematocrit is linear in general except at high shear rates, where a sublinear scale is found for the vorticity term and a quadratic scale for the longitudinal term. Through analysis of the suspension microstructure and numerical experiments, the nonlinear hemorheological dependence of the NP diffusion tensor is attributed to the streamwise elongation and cross-stream contraction of RBCs under high shear, quantified by a Capillary number. The RBC size is shown to be the characteristic length scale affecting the RBC-enhanced shear-induced diffusion (RESID), while the NP size at submicron exhibits negligible influence on the RESID. Based on the observed scaling behaviors, empirical correlations are proposed to bridge the NP diffusion tensor to specific shear rate and haematocrit. The characterized NP diffusion tensor provides a constitutive relation that can lead to more effective continuum models to tackle large-scale NP biotransport applications.
Experimental approaches have been applied to address questions in understanding three-dimensional chromatin organisation and function. As datasets increase in size and complexity, it becomes a challenge to reach a mechanistic interpretation of experimental results. Polymer simulations and mechanistic modelling have been applied to explain experimental observations, and the links to different aspects of genome function. Here, we provide a guide for biologists, explaining different simulation approaches and the contexts in which they have been used.