Modelling of the pulsatile blood flow in an arterial tree of retinal vasculature

Abstract

The paper presents a numerical investigation of pulsatile blood flow in arterial vasculatures of a mouse retina using a Womersley model incorporating an appropriate outlet boundary impedance at the end of the terminal vessels of the arterial tree (pre-capillary arterioles). The mouse retinal flatmount was prepared for confocal microscopy and the morphometric information of the vasculature was obtained from the confocal images. The pulsatile analysis focused on one of the arterial trees in the retinal vasculature. We included the in vivo viscosity evaluated from the mathematical models of Fahraues-Lindquist effect and the plasma skimming effect in the microcirculation. Comparative investigations of the pulsatile circulation were carried out for cases of constant viscosity, in vivo viscosity, zero and non-zero outlet boundary impedance. In addition, the dependency of the oscillating input impedance at the inlet of the arterial trees on angular frequencies of the oscillation and vessel elasticises was also studied. The study shows the pulsatile blood flow prediction is largely influenced by the outlet boundary impedance. The oscillating input impedance at the inlet of the arterial tree is also found to be significantly dependent on the angular frequency and the Young modulus of the vessel segment.