A computational fluid dynamics approach to determine white matter permeability
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Vidotto, Marco
Botnariuc, Daniela
De Momi, Elena
Dini, Daniele
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Glioblastomas represent a challenging problem with an extremely poor survival rate. Since these tumour cells have a highly invasive character, an effective surgical resection as well as chemotherapy and radiotherapy is very difficult. Convection-enhanced delivery (CED), a technique that consists in the injection of a therapeutic agent directly into the parenchyma, has shown encouraging results. Its efficacy depends on the ability to predict, in the pre-operative phase, the distribution of the drug inside the tumour. This paper proposes a method to compute a fundamental parameter for CED modelling outcomes, the hydraulic permeability, in three brain structures. Therefore, a bidimensional brain-like structure was built out of the main geometrical features of the white matter: axon diameter distribution extrapolated from electron microscopy images, extracellular space (ECS) volume fraction and ECS width. The axons were randomly allocated inside a defined border, and the ECS volume fraction as well as the ECS width maintained in a physiological range. To achieve this result, an outward packing method coupled with a disc shrinking technique was implemented. The fluid flow through the axons was computed by solving Navier–Stokes equations within the computational fluid dynamics solver ANSYS. From the fluid and pressure fields, an homogenisation technique allowed establishing the optimal representative volume element (RVE) size. The hydraulic permeability computed on the RVE was found in good agreement with experimental data from the literature.
Date Issued
2019-08
Date Acceptance
2019-02-11
Citation
Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology, 2019, 4 (4), pp.1111-1122
ISSN
1617-7940
Publisher
Springer (part of Springer Nature)
Start Page
1111
End Page
1122
Journal / Book Title
Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology
Volume
4
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, duplication, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, a link is provided to the Creative Commons license and any changes made are indicated.
License URL
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
Grant Number
EP/N025954/1
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Technology
Biophysics
Engineering, Biomedical
Engineering
Convection-enhanced delivery
Hydraulic permeability
Representative volume element
White matter
REPRESENTATIVE VOLUME ELEMENT
CONVECTION-ENHANCED DELIVERY
BRAIN EXTRACELLULAR-SPACE
INTERSTITIAL TRANSPORT
HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY
SOLUTE TRANSPORT
DIRECT INFUSION
DRUG-DELIVERY
MODEL
DIFFUSION
Convection-enhanced delivery
Hydraulic permeability
Representative volume element
White matter
Biomedical Engineering
0913 Mechanical Engineering
0903 Biomedical Engineering
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2019-02-20