Modeling of Kidney Hemodynamics: Probability-Based Topology of an Arterial Network
Fig 1
Top panel: Main steps of the recursive bifurcating algorithm to create an ABT. Starting with a vessel of a certain diameter, (a) determine the vessel length in accordance with its diameter; (b) estimate diameters and lengths of daughter vessels; (c) apply (b) to the first daughter vessel and continue recursively until Dstop is reached; (d) apply (b) to the last “unprocessed” daughter vessel; (e) apply (b), (c), and (d) until the whole tree is built. Bottom panel: Additional segmentation for kidney specific structure KSABT. (A) Determine initial diameter and length of the vessel; (B) Grow afferent arterioles (instead of daughter vessels); this is accompanied by the diameter reduction of the initial vessel in accordance with Murray’s law; (C) after the entire length of the vessel is processed, estimate the diameter of daughter vessels based on the new (reduced) diameter of the current vessel. Except segmentation, other steps of creating KSABT are the same as of ABT. Detailed description of the algorithm can be found in Materials and Methods.