| 摘要 | Blood flow inside liver organ plays a key role in hepatic functions, and abnormal hemodynamics is highly correlated with liver diseases. To date, the flow field in an elementary building block of the organ, namely liver lobule, is hard to be determined experimentally for human due to its complicated structure with radially branched microvasculature and the technical difficulties from its geometric constraint. Here we established a set of 3D computational models for a liver lobule upon porous media theory and analyzed its flow dynamics in normal, fibrotic and cirrhotic lobule. Our simulations indicated that those approximations of ordinary flow in portal tracts (PTs) and central vein (CV), and of porous media flow in sinusoidal network, were reasonable only for normal or fibrotic lobule. Modified models with high resistance in PTs and collateral vessels inside sinusoids were able to describe the flow features in cirrhotic lobule. Pressures, average velocities and volume flow rates were profiled and the predictions were well comparable with experimental data. This study furthered the understandings in the flow dynamics features of liver lobule and their differences among normal, fibrotic and cirrhotic lobule. |