Description
Problems in blood circulation can lead to disease with grave: The major cause of mortality in the industrialized world (and rapidly rising in the developing world) is circulatory disease, with the percentage of deaths attributed to it significantly exceeding the percentage attributed to all types of cancer. A detailed understanding of hemodynamics will remain an important goal of medical research for the foreseeable future.
Fundamental understanding of the processes that lead to blood flow problems requires a multiscale computational approach, linking the microscopic, molecular scale of proteins to the cellular level and to the continuum level of plasma flow.
Recent advances in computational modeling have made this type of multiscale modeling feasible. The proposing team has recently succeeded in coupling continuum fluid flow and discrete molecular dynamics in the context of the specific (Lattice Boltzmann Equation-based) approach they seek to expand upon in this project.
An accurate multiscale simulation of hemodynamics would undoubtedly enable significant advances in the fundamental knowledge associated with blood flow problems and inspire novel practical methods for treating related diseases. Thus, the IIC is facilitating a study by the proposing team being joined with six distinguished U.S. and European collaborators. They are assessing which parts of this large problem can be tackled first, with what resources, and with what likely clinical applications.
