Intraorgan Flow Heterogeneities

Abstract

The variation in a physiological property, characteristic, or measure is often found to be important to organ function. Variations in histologic staining, in receptor densities, in NADH fluorescence, etc., are noted in many current articles. Most such variations that have been revealed by morphometric or chemical methods are spatial variations. Advances in technical accuracy allow us to distinguish between true spatial variation and experimental errors in the values measured at different spatial positions. These observations raise questions as to the cause of variation. In this chapter we shall use measures of regional blood flows to illustrate the approaches, while remembering that the same methods may also be used to evaluate spatial heterogeneity for other attributes, such as the density of binding sites for β-blockers or the concentrations of ATP or lactate dehydrogenase.

Some parts are homogeneous... others dissimilar, heterogeneous...

William Harvey (1616)