Knife-edge scanning microscopy for in silico study of cerebral blood flow: From biological imaging data to flow...

Knife-edge scanning microscopy provides the capability to image whole-brain cerebral microvasculature of small organisms, such as mice, at sub-micron resolution, providing a feasible foundation for the reconstruction of circulatory pathways from the systemic to cellular scale. In this paper, we illustrate the feasibility of using this data to model cerebral blood flow using numerical simulations. Starting with a small vascular element in microcirculation of interest, we present its segmentation from the imaging-data volume, construction of its triangular surface mesh, assembly of its tetrahedral volumetric mesh from the surface, and then conclude with Stokes flow simulation of plasma through the microvascular vessel.