Regulation of arterial pressure

Individualized modeling and simulation of blood flow mechanics find applications in both animal research and patient care. Individual animal or patient models for blood vessel mechanics are based on combining measured vascular geometry with a fluid structure model coupling formulations describing dynamics of the fluid and mechanics of the wall. For example, one-dimensional fluid flow modeling requires a constitutive law relating vessel cross-sectional deformation to pressure in the lumen.

Cerebral autoregulation refers to the physiological process that maintains stable cerebral blood flow (CBF) during changes in arterial blood pressure (ABP). In this study, we propose a simple, nonlinear quantitative model with only four parameters that can predict CBF velocity as a function of ABP. The model was motivated by the viscoelastic-like behavior observed in the data collected during postural change from sitting to standing.

This study compares a pulsatile and a non-pulsatile model for prediction of head-up tilt dynamics for healthy young adults. Many people suffering from dizziness or light-headedness are often exposed to the head-up tilt test to explore potential deficits within the autonomic control system, which is supposed to maintain the cardiovascular system at homeostasis. However, this system is complex and difficult to study in vivo. This study shows how mathematical modeling can be used to extract features of the system that cannot be measured experimentally.