Le réseau micro-vasculaire structure la distribution de la pression sanguine

Abstract

Cerebral micro-vascular networks control the blood pressure distribution when considering in vitro blood rheology models. Blood rheology is complex and non-linear. In small vessels, the effective viscosity variations are important due to red blood cells packing in capillaries, the so-called Fåhræus-Lindquist effect, whilst concomitantly phase segregation appears in bifurcations. Direct numerical simulations of different non-linear rheological models of the blood are performed on realistic three-dimensional micro-vascular networks. These simulations exhibit two significant results. First, various rheological models lead to very similar pressure distribution over the whole range of physiologically relevant hematocrits. Secondly, different models for phase segregation lead to very distinct hematocrit distributions in the micro-vacular network. Nevertheless, the hematocrit distribution very weakly affects the pressure distribution. Hence, our results suggest that the micro-vacular network structure mainly controls the pressure distribution in micro-circulation, whilst the effect of hematocrit distribution is weak.