Modeling the effect of biophysical parameters on mass transport in capillary networks

Describes a generalization to other chemical species of a previously developed computational model (Goldman and Popel, 2000, 2001) of oxygen transport in capillary networks. In particular, the transport of larger molecules is considered. A steady-state transport model is described for the case where the species of interest is carried mainly in dissolved form in the blood and the systemic concentration is fixed. A simplified one-dimensional version of this model is solved analytically to show how transport might be affected by biophysical parameters such as the diffusion constant and rate of degradation in the tissue. A three-dimensional, striated muscle capillary network is being used in numerical simulations to determine the effects of these parameters in the full model. Results of sample calculations are presented.