Abstract
The permeability tensor, which relates the blood flow and the gradient of blood pressure, is important for describing the micro circulation of the liver at a microscale. Such a tensor can be estimated in vitro through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations on vascular corrosion casts imaged through micro-computed tomography. Unfortunately, these simulations are computationally expensive and require boundary conditions that are difficult to design. In this paper, we propose an alternative method for approximating such a tensor using efficient image processing techniques for describing the geometry of the microvasculature. The generalized mean intercept length fabric tensor is estimated from images of microvessels of the liver. Orientation and anisotropy are estimated from the fabric tensor, while its size is computed as a function of the volume occupied by sinusoids in the complete lobule. The difference between estimations of the permeability tensor on a sample of a lobule through CFD and fabric tensors in anisotropy, orientation, and size were 0.2%, 19.62∘, and 17.9%, respectively. The new method takes 330 ms for processing the sample, compared to several hours for CFD, and 7.5 s for a complete lobule. Moreover, the new method does not require to set boundary conditions. Thus, the new method is promising for analyzing large amounts of data efficiently.
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Notes
- 1.
Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethical Committee of the University Hospitals Leuven (Belgium) and by the Belgian Liver and Intestine Committee.
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Moreno, R., Segers, P., Debbaut, C. (2017). Estimation of the Permeability Tensor of the Microvasculature of the Liver Through Fabric Tensors. In: Wittek, A., Joldes, G., Nielsen, P., Doyle, B., Miller, K. (eds) Computational Biomechanics for Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54481-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54481-6_6
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