Fig 1.
A simplified model for active drug transport within the capillaries, across the BBB and subsequent metabolism.
The drug is represented by purple circles.
Table 1.
Parameter ranges governing the overall blood flow, the plasma concentration and the active transport of L-Dopa.
The precise values used in each simulation are listed in the figure captions.
Fig 2.
A schematic depiction of the lattice refinement process.
The coarse blue network G1 is replaced by the finer red network G2. Both networks fill out the same computational volume. The arrows indicate the direction of the flow through the network.
Fig 3.
The lattice graph G6 with indicated vessel radii.
The overall blood flow direction is from left to right.
Fig 4.
The radius distributions for the subdivision levels n = 5, 15 and 149 (from right to left).
Note the logarithmic scale on the horizontal axis; the area under each curve is 1.
Fig 5.
The total flow rates through several lattice graphs as a function of their average vessel radius.
The dashed lines are the extrapolation from the actually computed flow rates. The legend indicates the pressure drop ΔP.
Fig 6.
The total drug concentration at steady state as a function of the exchange area with the best fit to Eq (5).
The drug concentration in the incoming blood is v0 = 5 μM and v0 = 10 μM, respectively. The dashed vertical indicates the extrapolated value for the estimated exchange area of 120 cm2.
Fig 7.
The extrapolated total drug concentration at an exchange area of 120 cm2 as a function of the incoming drug concentration v0.
Fig 8.
The drug concentration in the tissue as a function of the distance along the x-axis.
The legend indicates the networks on which the steady states were found. The incoming drug concentration is v0 = 5 μM.
Fig 9.
A schematic comparison of blood flow through a large organ (left) and an intermediate size tissue volume (right).