A Computational Model of Thrombus Growth Based on Level Set Method

• Published in: IEEE access 2021, Vol.9, p.100769-100780
• Main Authors: Ma, Chaoqing, Zheng, Qiang, Wang, Juan, Cai, Qing, Li, Honglun, Du, Ruoyu, Tong, Xiangrong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biological system modeling; Blood; Blood clots; Blood platelets; Computational modeling; Continuum modeling; Level set; Mathematical model; medical simulation; Platelets; Regularization; Simulation; Thrombosis; visualization
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3091556

The computational model of thrombosis is of great importance that decides the simulation performance. In the present study, a hybrid particle-continuum model with plasma, vascular wall, and thrombus being continuum material and platelets being discrete particles, was developed to simulate the thrombus growth. In the computational model, the thrombus growth was reformulated as a novel continuum surface expansion problem implemented by a level set function due to its capability of effectively handling the topological changes comprising splitting and merging, rather than a traditional particle accumulation problem. Additionally, a Gaussian-based function and distance regularization function, served as speed functions to drive the thrombus growth, were proposed and compared in our study. Experiments demonstrated that the growing thrombus could retain the particle texture of platelets by both level set speed functions, while the distance regularization function performed better in improving computational complexity and surface tracking behaviors. Both simulations demonstrated better visuality in the progress of thrombosis, and the geometry shape of the virtual primary thrombi were similar to the realistic counterpart.