A Fluid-Cell Interaction and Adhesion Algorithm for Tissue Coating of Cardiovascular Implants

Abstract

Abstract. In this manuscript we develop a fluid-cell interaction and adhesion algorithm applied to modeling the cell coating of artificial surfaces of cardiovascular implants for improved biocompatibility. The fluid-cell interaction and adhesion algorithm proposed in this manuscript is a multi-scale model that captures the process of cell adhesion which occurs at a scale of a few nano meters, and couples it with fluid-cell interaction which occurs at a scale of a few hundred microns. Cells are assumed rigid and neutrally buoyant. Cell adhesion is modeled using a a kinetics-based dynamic adhesion algorithm. Fluid-cell interaction is modeled using the fictitious domain method with distributed Lagrange multipliers. The coupling between the two is achieved through a time-splitting scheme. Novel results regarding the influence of certain fluid dynamics parameters and adhesion parameters on the generation of a stable and strong tissue coating of artificial surfaces are presented. The modular nature of this algorithm makes it easily applicable to a large class of problems involving the processes of cell adhesion and fluid-cell interaction.

A fictitious domain method with a hybrid cell model for simulating motion of cells in fluid flow

“…On the interface, the coupled system of equations have to satisfy the explicitly defined boundary condition. Numerical methods, such as the boundary element method (BEM) [4,43,63], immersed boundary method (IBM) [40,41,42], immersed interface method (IIM) [31,32,33], fictitious domain method (FDM) [36,46,48,49,74], front tracking method (FTM) [16,27,50,73], and the grid based particle method [54] belong to this category.…”

“…[74] generalized this approach for the general solid material by introducing the continuum equations instead of Newton's motion equations. In [46] a multiscale fluid-cell interaction and cell-substrate adhesion model was introduced to model the cell coating of artificial surfaces of cardiovascular implants. The cells were modeled as rigid particles and were coupled with flow by the distributed Lagrange multiplier-based FDM.…”

An augmented immersed interface method for moving structures with mass

“…The II method also shares some common feature with the Fictitious Domain (FD) method for fluid-particle interactions by which the flow computation is done on a fixed mesh and the rigid body motion of the particle is enforced through Lagrange multipliers in the equations [1]. We refer the reader to [1, 17, 2, 3] for the FD method and its recent applications.…”