Author: Matteo Carlo Maria AlettiPublisher:
ISBN:
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Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The structure of the eye offers a unique opportunity to directly observe the microcirculation, by means, for instance, of fundus camera, which are cheap devices commonly used in the clinical practice. This can facilitate the screening of systemic deseases such as diabetes and hypertension, or eye diseases such as glaucoma. A key phenomenon in the microcirculation is the autoregulation, which is the ability of certain vessels to adapt their diameter to regulate the blood flow rate in response to changes in the systemic pressure or metabolic needs. Impairments in autoregulation are strongly correlated with pathological states. The hemodynamics in the eye is influenced by the intraocular pressure (IOP), the pressure inside the eye globe, which is in turn influenced by the ocular blood flow. The interest in the IOP stems from the fact that it plays a role in several eye-diseases, such as glaucoma. Mathematical modelling can help in interpreting the interplay between these phenomena and better exploit the available data. In the first part of the thesis we present a simplified fluid-structure interaction model that includes autoregulation. A layer of fibers in the vessel wall models the smooth muscle cells that regulate the diameter of the vessel. The model is applied to a 3D image-based network of retinal arterioles. In the second part, we propose a multi-compartments model of the eye. We use the equations of poroelasticity to model the blood flow in the choroid. The model includes other compartments that transmit the pulsatility from the choroid to the anterior chamber, where the measurements of the IOP are actually performed. We present some preliminary results on the choroid, the aqueous humor and on the choroid coupled with the vitreous. Finally, we present a reduced order modelling technique to speed up multiphysics simulations. We use high fidelity models for the compartments of particular interest from the modelling point of view. The other compartments are instead replaced by a reduced representation of the corresponding Steklov-Poincaré operator.