Depth-dependent flow and pressure characteristics in cortical microvascular networks
Fig 2
Pathway characteristics of red blood cells (RBCs) through cortical microvascular networks (MVNs).
(A) MVN 1 with five 200 μm thick analysis layers (ALs). (B) Five exemplary RBC paths through MVN 1. The five paths enter the capillary bed in the 5 different ALs (yellow: AL 1, light green: AL 2, dark green: AL 3, light blue: AL 4, dark blue: AL 5). The spheres illustrate the start and the end points of the capillary bed along the underlying path. The flow direction in the DAs and the AVs are shown by the adjacent arrows. (C) Cortical depth of the capillary start point over the cortical depth of the capillary end point. The scatter plot shows all available end points for every start point. The color code represents the relative frequency of occurrence of the end point. The red line is a linear fit to the data points (underlying equation given in Eq (5)). The Pearson’s correlation coefficient is r = 0.86. (D) & (E) Pressure and diameter over the path length for two exemplary trajectories of two RBCs from MVN 1 with their capillary start point lying in AL 2 (light green RBC trajectory in (B)) and in AL 4 (light blue RBC trajectory in (B)), respectively. PA: pial artery, DA: descending arteriole, A: arteriole, C: capillary, V: venule, AV: ascending venule, PV: pial vein