Print Email Facebook Twitter Quantification of Blood Flow and Topology in Developing Vascular Networks Title Quantification of Blood Flow and Topology in Developing Vascular Networks Author Kloosterman, A. Hierck, B. Westerweel, J. Poelma, C. Faculty Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering Department Process and Energy Date 2014-05-13 Abstract Since fluid dynamics plays a critical role in vascular remodeling, quantification of the hemodynamics is crucial to gain more insight into this complex process. Better understanding of vascular development can improve prediction of the process, and may eventually even be used to influence the vascular structure. In this study, a methodology to quantify hemodynamics and network structure of developing vascular networks is described. The hemodynamic parameters and topology are derived from detailed local blood flow velocities, obtained by in vivo micro-PIV measurements. The use of such detailed flow measurements is shown to be essential, as blood vessels with a similar diameter can have a large variation in flow rate. Measurements are performed in the yolk sacs of seven chicken embryos at two developmental stages between HH 13+ and 17+. A large range of flow velocities (1 µm/s to 1 mm/s) is measured in blood vessels with diameters in the range of 25–500 µm. The quality of the data sets is investigated by verifying the flow balances in the branching points. This shows that the quality of the data sets of the seven embryos is comparable for all stages observed, and the data is suitable for further analysis with known accuracy. When comparing two subsequently characterized networks of the same embryo, vascular remodeling is observed in all seven networks. However, the character of remodeling in the seven embryos differs and can be non-intuitive, which confirms the necessity of quantification. To illustrate the potential of the data, we present a preliminary quantitative study of key network topology parameters and we compare these with theoretical design rules. Subject blood flowblood vesselschickensembryosflow rateheart ratehemodynamicsOA-Fund TU Delft To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:8281fd96-837d-40f6-a373-481b332e8295 DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096856 Publisher Public Library of Science ISSN 1932-6203 Source http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0096856 Source PLoS ONE, 9 (5), 2014 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights (c) 2014 The Author(s)This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Files PDF Poelma_2014.pdf 4.05 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:8281fd96-837d-40f6-a373-481b332e8295/datastream/OBJ/view