An interaction graph approach to gain new insights into mechanisms that modulate cerebrovascular tone.

Mechanisms to modulate cerebrovascular tone are numerous, interconnected, and spatially dependent, increasing the complexity of experimental study design, interpretation of action-effect pathways, and mechanistic modelling. This difficulty is exacerbated when there is an incomplete understanding of these pathways. We propose interaction graphs to break down this complexity, while still maintaining a holistic view of mechanisms to modulate cerebrovascular tone. These graphs highlight the competing processes of neurovascular coupling, cerebral autoregulation, and cerebral reactivity. Subsequent analysis of these interaction graphs provides new insights and suggest potential directions for research on neurovascular coupling, modelling, and dementia.

Computational fluid dynamic modeling of the lymphatic system: a review of existing models and future directions.

Historically, research into the lymphatic system has been overlooked due to both a lack of knowledge and limited recognition of its importance. In the last decade however, lymphatic research has gained substantial momentum and has included the development of a variety of computational models to aid understanding of this complex system. This article reviews existing computational fluid dynamic models of the lymphatics covering each structural component including the initial lymphatics, pre-collecting and collecting vessels, and lymph nodes. This is followed by a summary of limitations and gaps in existing computational models and reasons that development in this field has been hindered to date. Over the next decade, efforts to further characterize lymphatic anatomy and physiology are anticipated to provide key data to further inform and validate lymphatic fluid dynamic models. Development of more comprehensive multiscale- and multi-physics computational models has the potential to significantly enhance the understanding of lymphatic function in both health and disease.

Atlas-Free Automatic Segmentation of Sheep Brain MRI.

Automated 3D brain segmentation methods have been shown to produce fast, reliable, and reproducible segmentations from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences for the anatomical structures of the human brain. Despite the extensive experimental research utility of large animal species such as the sheep, there is limited literature on the segmentation of their brains relative to that of humans. The availability of automatic segmentation algorithms for animal brain models can have significant impact for experimental explorations, such as treatment planning and studying brain injuries. The neuroanatomical similarities in size and structure between sheep and humans, plus their long lifespan and docility, make them an ideal animal model for investigating automatic segmentation methods.This work, for the first time, proposes an atlas-free fully automatic sheep brain segmentation tool that only requires structural MR images (T1-MPRAGE images) to segment the entire sheep brain in less than one minute. We trained a convolutional neural network (CNN) model - namely a four-layer U-Net - on data from eleven adult sheep brains (training and validation: 8 sheep, testing: 3 sheep), with a high overall Dice overlap score of 93.7%.Clinical relevance- Upon future validation on larger datasets, our atlas-free automatic segmentation tool can have clinical utility and contribute towards developing robust and fully automatic segmentation tools which could compete with atlas-based tools currently available.

From fetus to neonate: A review of cardiovascular modeling in early life.

Computational modeling has well-established utility in the study of cardiovascular hemodynamics, with applications in medical research and, increasingly, in clinical settings to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Most cardiovascular models developed to date have been of the adult circulatory system; however, the perinatal period is unique as cardiovascular physiology undergoes drastic changes from the fetal circulation, during the birth transition, and into neonatal life. There may also be further complications in this period: for example, preterm birth (defined as birth before 37 completed weeks of gestation) carries risks of short-term cardiovascular instability and is associated with increased lifetime cardiovascular risk. Here, we review computational models of the cardiovascular system in early life, their applications to date and potential improvements and enhancements of these models. We propose a roadmap for developing an open-source cardiovascular model that spans the fetal, perinatal, and postnatal periods. This article is categorized under: Cardiovascular Diseases > Computational Models Cardiovascular Diseases > Biomedical Engineering Congenital Diseases > Computational Models.

Roadmap for an imaging and modelling paediatric study in rural NZ.

Our study methodology is motivated from three disparate needs: one, imaging studies have existed in silo and study organs but not across organ systems; two, there are gaps in our understanding of paediatric structure and function; three, lack of representative data in New Zealand. Our research aims to address these issues in part, through the combination of magnetic resonance imaging, advanced image processing algorithms and computational modelling. Our study demonstrated the need to take an organ-system approach and scan multiple organs on the same child. We have pilot tested an imaging protocol to be minimally disruptive to the children and demonstrated state-of-the-art image processing and personalized computational models using the imaging data. Our imaging protocol spans brain, lungs, heart, muscle, bones, abdominal and vascular systems. Our initial set of results demonstrated child-specific measurements on one dataset. This work is novel and interesting as we have run multiple computational physiology workflows to generate personalized computational models. Our proposed work is the first step towards achieving the integration of imaging and modelling improving our understanding of the human body in paediatric health and disease.

Computational models for generating microvascular structures: Investigations beyond medical imaging resolution.

Angiogenesis, arteriogenesis, and pruning are revascularization processes essential to our natural vascular development and adaptation, as well as central players in the onset and development of pathologies such as tumoral growth and stroke recovery. Computational modeling allows for repeatable experimentation and exploration of these complex biological processes. In this review, we provide an introduction to the biological understanding of the vascular adaptation processes of sprouting angiogenesis, intussusceptive angiogenesis, anastomosis, pruning, and arteriogenesis, discussing some of the more significant contributions made to the computational modeling of these processes. Each computational model represents a theoretical framework for how biology functions, and with rises in computing power and study of the problem these frameworks become more accurate and complete. We highlight physiological, pathological, and technological applications that can be benefit from the advances performed by these models, and we also identify which elements of the biology are underexplored in the current state-of-the-art computational models. This article is categorized under: Cancer > Computational Models Cardiovascular Diseases > Computational Models.

In silico modeling for the hepatic circulation and transport: From the liver organ to lobules.

The function of the liver depends critically on its blood supply. Numerous in silico models have been developed to study various aspects of the hepatic circulation, including not only the macro-hemodynamics at the organ level, but also the microcirculation at the lobular level. In addition, computational models of blood flow and bile flow have been used to study the transport, metabolism, and clearance of drugs in pharmacokinetic studies. These in silico models aim to provide insights into the liver organ function under both healthy and diseased states, and to assist quantitative analysis for surgical planning and postsurgery treatment. The purpose of this review is to provide an update on state-of-the-art in silico models of the hepatic circulation and transport processes. We introduce the numerical methods and the physiological background of these models. We also discuss multiscale frameworks that have been proposed for the liver, and their linkage with the large context of systems biology, systems pharmacology, and the Physiome project. This article is categorized under: Metabolic Diseases > Computational Models Metabolic Diseases > Biomedical Engineering Cardiovascular Diseases > Computational Models.

A modular and reusable model of epithelial transport in the proximal convoluted tubule.

We review a collection of published renal epithelial transport models, from which we build a consistent and reusable mathematical model able to reproduce many observations and predictions from the literature. The flexible modular model we present here can be adapted to specific configurations of epithelial transport, and in this work we focus on transport in the proximal convoluted tubule of the renal nephron. Our mathematical model of the epithelial proximal convoluted tubule describes the cellular and subcellular mechanisms of the transporters, intracellular buffering, solute fluxes, and other processes. We provide free and open access to the Python implementation to ensure our multiscale proximal tubule model is accessible; enabling the reader to explore the model through setting their own simulations, reproducibility tests, and sensitivity analyses.

Computational Modelling of Glucose Uptake by SGLT1 and Apical GLUT2 in the Enterocyte.

It has been suggested that glucose absorption in the small intestine depends on both constitutively expressed SGLT1 and translocated GLUT2 in the brush border membrane, especially in the presence of high levels of luminal glucose. Here, we present a computational model of non-isotonic glucose uptake by small intestinal epithelial cells. The model incorporates apical uptake via SGLT1 and GLUT2, basolateral efflux into the blood via GLUT2, and cellular volume changes in response to non-isotonic conditions. The dependence of glucose absorption on luminal glucose, blood flow rate, and inlet blood glucose concentration is studied. Uptake via apical GLUT2 is found to be sensitive to all these factors. Under a range of conditions, the maximum apical GLUT2 flux is about half of the SGLT1 flux and is achieved at high luminal glucose (> 50 mM), high blood flow rates, and low inlet blood concentrations. In contrast, SGLT1 flux is less sensitive to these factors. When luminal glucose concentration is less than 10 mM, apical GLUT2 serves as an efflux pathway for glucose to move from the blood to the lumen. The model results indicate that translocation of GLUT2 from the basolateral to the apical membrane increases glucose uptake into the cell; however, the reduction of efflux capacity results in a decrease in net absorption. Recruitment of GLUT2 from a cytosolic pool elicits a 10-20% increase in absorption for luminal glucose levels in the a 20-100 mM range. Increased SGLT1 activity also leads to a roughly 20% increase in absorption. A concomitant increase in blood supply results in a larger increase in absorption. Increases in apical glucose transporter activity help to minimise cell volume changes by reducing the osmotic gradient between the cell and the lumen.

Hierarchical semantic composition of biosimulation models using bond graphs.

Simulating complex biological and physiological systems and predicting their behaviours under different conditions remains challenging. Breaking systems into smaller and more manageable modules can address this challenge, assisting both model development and simulation. Nevertheless, existing computational models in biology and physiology are often not modular and therefore difficult to assemble into larger models. Even when this is possible, the resulting model may not be useful due to inconsistencies either with the laws of physics or the physiological behaviour of the system. Here, we propose a general methodology for composing models, combining the energy-based bond graph approach with semantics-based annotations. This approach improves model composition and ensures that a composite model is physically plausible. As an example, we demonstrate this approach to automated model composition using a model of human arterial circulation. The major benefit is that modellers can spend more time on understanding the behaviour of complex biological and physiological systems and less time wrangling with model composition.

Adaptive constrained constructive optimisation for complex vascularisation processes.

Mimicking angiogenetic processes in vascular territories acquires importance in the analysis of the multi-scale circulatory cascade and the coupling between blood flow and cell function. The present work extends, in several aspects, the Constrained Constructive Optimisation (CCO) algorithm to tackle complex automatic vascularisation tasks. The main extensions are based on the integration of adaptive optimisation criteria and multi-staged space-filling strategies which enhance the modelling capabilities of CCO for specific vascular architectures. Moreover, this vascular outgrowth can be performed either from scratch or from an existing network of vessels. Hence, the vascular territory is defined as a partition of vascular, avascular and carriage domains (the last one contains vessels but not terminals) allowing one to model complex vascular domains. In turn, the multi-staged space-filling approach allows one to delineate a sequence of biologically-inspired stages during the vascularisation process by exploiting different constraints, optimisation strategies and domain partitions stage by stage, improving the consistency with the architectural hierarchy observed in anatomical structures. With these features, the aDaptive CCO (DCCO) algorithm proposed here aims at improving the modelled network anatomy. The capabilities of the DCCO algorithm are assessed with a number of anatomically realistic scenarios.

Modeling the hepatic arterial flow in living liver donor after left hepatectomy and postoperative boundary condition exploration.

Preoperative and postoperative hepatic perfusion is modeled with one-dimensional (1-D) Navier-Stokes equations. Flow rates obtained from ultrasound (US) data and impedance resulted from structured trees are the inflow and outflow boundary condition (BC), respectively. Structured trees terminate at the size of the arterioles, which can enlarge their size after hepatectomy. In clinical studies, the resistance to pulsatile arterial flow caused by the microvascular bed can be reflected by the resistive index (RI), a frequently used index in assessing arterial resistance. This study uses the RI in a novel manner to conveniently obtain the postoperative outflow impedance from the preoperative impedance. The major emphasis of this study is to devise a model to capture the postoperative hepatic hemodynamics after left hepatectomy. To study this, we build a hepatic network model and analyze its behavior under four different outflow impedance: (a) the same as preoperative impedance; (b) evaluated using the RI and preoperative impedance; (c) computed from structured tree BC with increased radius of terminal vessels; and (d) evaluated using structured tree with both increased radius of root vessel, ie, the outlets of the postoperative hepatic artery, and increased radius of terminal vessels. Our results show that both impedance from (b) and (d) give a physiologically reasonable postoperative hepatic pressure range, while the RI in (b) allows for a fast approximation of postoperative impedance. Since hemodynamics after hepatectomy are not fully understood, the methods used in this study to explore postoperative outflow BC are informative for future models exploring hemodynamic effects of partial hepatectomy.

Anatomically based simulation of hepatic perfusion in the human liver.

Liver structures of a healthy subject are digitised and segmented from computed tomography (CT) images, and hepatic perfusion is modelled in the hepatic artery and portal vein of the healthy subject with structured tree-based outflow boundary conditions. This self-similar structured tree is widely used in the literature, eg, blood flow simulation in larger systemic arteries and cerebral circulation, and is used in this study to model the effect of the smaller hepatic arteries and arterioles, as well as the smaller hepatic portal veins and portal venules. Physiologically reasonable results are obtained. Since the structured tree terminates at the size of the microvasculature system in liver lobules, the structured tree boundary condition will enable the proposed organ-level model of hepatic arterial flow to be easily connected to tissue-level models of liver lobules. Blood flow in the hepatic vein is also modelled in this subject with three-element Windkessel model as outflow boundary conditions. The benefit of integrating the perfusion in all hepatic vascular vessels is that it helps us analyse some complicated clinical phenomenon more efficiently, eg, one possible application is to obtain the portal pressure gradient (PPG) to help examine the reliability of hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG) as an indirect measure of portal pressure. Moreover, since four to six generations of hepatic vessels, which are sufficient for liver classification analysis, were employed in the model, this study is setting the computational foundation of a potentially handy surgical tool.

Computational Modeling of Glucose Uptake in the Enterocyte.

Absorption of glucose across the epithelial cells of the small intestine is a key process in human nutrition and initiates signaling cascades that regulate metabolic homeostasis. Validated and predictive mathematical models of glucose transport in intestinal epithelial cells are essential for interpreting experimental data, generating hypotheses, and understanding the contributions of and interactions between transport pathways. Here we report on the development of such a model that, in contrast to existing models, incorporates mechanistic descriptions of all relevant transport proteins and is implemented in the CellML framework. The model is validated against experimental and simulation data from the literature. It is then used to elucidate the relative contributions of the sodium-glucose cotransporter (SGLT1) and the glucose transporter type 2 (GLUT2) proteins in published measurements of glucose absorption from human intestinal epithelial cell lines. The model predicts that the contribution of SGLT1 dominates at low extracellular glucose concentrations (<20 mM) and short exposure times (<60 s) while the GLUT2 contribution is more significant at high glucose concentrations and long durations. Implementation in CellML permitted a modular structure in which the model was composed by reusing existing models of the individual transporters. The final structure also permits transparent changes of the model components and parameter values in order to facilitate model reuse, extension, and customization (for example, to simplify, or add complexity to specific transporter/pathway models, or reuse the model as a component of a larger framework) and carry out parameter sensitivity studies.

Bond Graph Model of Cerebral Circulation: Toward Clinically Feasible Systemic Blood Flow Simulations.

We propose a detailed CellML model of the human cerebral circulation that runs faster than real time on a desktop computer and is designed for use in clinical settings when the speed of response is important. A lumped parameter mathematical model, which is based on a one-dimensional formulation of the flow of an incompressible fluid in distensible vessels, is constructed using a bond graph formulation to ensure mass conservation and energy conservation. The model includes arterial vessels with geometric and anatomical data based on the ADAN circulation model. The peripheral beds are represented by lumped parameter compartments. We compare the hemodynamics predicted by the bond graph formulation of the cerebral circulation with that given by a classical one-dimensional Navier-Stokes model working on top of the whole-body ADAN model. Outputs from the bond graph model, including the pressure and flow signatures and blood volumes, are compared with physiological data.

Next-generation, personalised, model-based critical care medicine: a state-of-the art review of in silico virtual patient models, methods, and cohorts, and how to validation them.

Critical care, like many healthcare areas, is under a dual assault from significantly increasing demographic and economic pressures. Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are highly variable in response to treatment, and increasingly aging populations mean ICUs are under increasing demand and their cohorts are increasingly ill. Equally, patient expectations are growing, while the economic ability to deliver care to all is declining. Better, more productive care is thus the big challenge. One means to that end is personalised care designed to manage the significant inter- and intra-patient variability that makes the ICU patient difficult. Thus, moving from current "one size fits all" protocolised care to adaptive, model-based "one method fits all" personalised care could deliver the required step change in the quality, and simultaneously the productivity and cost, of care. Computer models of human physiology are a unique tool to personalise care, as they can couple clinical data with mathematical methods to create subject-specific models and virtual patients to design new, personalised and more optimal protocols, as well as to guide care in real-time. They rely on identifying time varying patient-specific parameters in the model that capture inter- and intra-patient variability, the difference between patients and the evolution of patient condition. Properly validated, virtual patients represent the real patients, and can be used in silico to test different protocols or interventions, or in real-time to guide care. Hence, the underlying models and methods create the foundation for next generation care, as well as a tool for safely and rapidly developing personalised treatment protocols over large virtual cohorts using virtual trials. This review examines the models and methods used to create virtual patients. Specifically, it presents the models types and structures used and the data required. It then covers how to validate the resulting virtual patients and trials, and how these virtual trials can help design and optimise clinical trial. Links between these models and higher order, more complex physiome models are also discussed. In each section, it explores the progress reported up to date, especially on core ICU therapies in glycemic, circulatory and mechanical ventilation management, where high cost and frequency of occurrence provide a significant opportunity for model-based methods to have measurable clinical and economic impact. The outcomes are readily generalised to other areas of medical care.

Roadmap for cardiovascular circulation model.

Computational models of many aspects of the mammalian cardiovascular circulation have been developed. Indeed, along with orthopaedics, this area of physiology is one that has attracted much interest from engineers, presumably because the equations governing blood flow in the vascular system are well understood and can be solved with well-established numerical techniques. Unfortunately, there have been only a few attempts to create a comprehensive public domain resource for cardiovascular researchers. In this paper we propose a roadmap for developing an open source cardiovascular circulation model. The model should be registered to the musculo-skeletal system. The computational infrastructure for the cardiovascular model should provide for near real-time computation of blood flow and pressure in all parts of the body. The model should deal with vascular beds in all tissues, and the computational infrastructure for the model should provide links into CellML models of cell function and tissue function. In this work we review the literature associated with 1D blood flow modelling in the cardiovascular system, discuss model encoding standards, software and a model repository. We then describe the coordinate systems used to define the vascular geometry, derive the equations and discuss the implementation of these coupled equations in the open source computational software OpenCMISS. Finally, some preliminary results are presented and plans outlined for the next steps in the development of the model, the computational software and the graphical user interface for accessing the model.

The Open Physiology workflow: modeling processes over physiology circuitboards of interoperable tissue units.

A key challenge for the physiology modeling community is to enable the searching, objective comparison and, ultimately, re-use of models and associated data that are interoperable in terms of their physiological meaning. In this work, we outline the development of a workflow to modularize the simulation of tissue-level processes in physiology. In particular, we show how, via this approach, we can systematically extract, parcellate and annotate tissue histology data to represent component units of tissue function. These functional units are semantically interoperable, in terms of their physiological meaning. In particular, they are interoperable with respect to [i] each other and with respect to [ii] a circuitboard representation of long-range advective routes of fluid flow over which to model long-range molecular exchange between these units. We exemplify this approach through the combination of models for physiology-based pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics to quantitatively depict biological mechanisms across multiple scales. Links to the data, models and software components that constitute this workflow are found at http://open-physiology.org/.

Using CellML with OpenCMISS to Simulate Multi-Scale Physiology.

OpenCMISS is an open-source modeling environment aimed, in particular, at the solution of bioengineering problems. OpenCMISS consists of two main parts: a computational library (OpenCMISS-Iron) and a field manipulation and visualization library (OpenCMISS-Zinc). OpenCMISS is designed for the solution of coupled multi-scale, multi-physics problems in a general-purpose parallel environment. CellML is an XML format designed to encode biophysically based systems of ordinary differential equations and both linear and non-linear algebraic equations. A primary design goal of CellML is to allow mathematical models to be encoded in a modular and reusable format to aid reproducibility and interoperability of modeling studies. In OpenCMISS, we make use of CellML models to enable users to configure various aspects of their multi-scale physiological models. This avoids the need for users to be familiar with the OpenCMISS internal code in order to perform customized computational experiments. Examples of this are: cellular electrophysiology models embedded in tissue electrical propagation models; material constitutive relationships for mechanical growth and deformation simulations; time-varying boundary conditions for various problem domains; and fluid constitutive relationships and lumped-parameter models. In this paper, we provide implementation details describing how CellML models are integrated into multi-scale physiological models in OpenCMISS. The external interface OpenCMISS presents to users is also described, including specific examples exemplifying the extensibility and usability these tools provide the physiological modeling and simulation community. We conclude with some thoughts on future extension of OpenCMISS to make use of other community developed information standards, such as FieldML, SED-ML, and BioSignalML. Plans for the integration of accelerator code (graphical processing unit and field programmable gate array) generated from CellML models is also discussed.