Modeling of thermal regulation of peripheral circulation

Microcirculatory response to a thermal stimulation involves both an axon reflex and a NO-mediated activation. The analysis of microcirculatory flow following a thermal stimulation may therefore give an insight to the underlying physiological systems controlling the flow. In this study, the microcirculatory flow in response to local heating is measured using a laser Doppler instrument. The average flow is mathematically modeled to extract a set of quantitative parameters. The assessment of the method was performed by analyzing the variations of the parameters in a group of healthy volunteers. Results confirm that the model parameters allow to evaluate the age-related variations of both the axon reflex and the NO-mediated activation.