Multiscale modeling of a Chemofilter device for filtering chemotherapy toxins from blood

\textbf{Purpose}: Chemotherapy drugs injected intra-arterially to treat cancer can cause systemic toxic effects. A catheter-based Chemofilter device, temporarily deployed in a vein during the procedure can filter excessive drug from the blood thus reducing chemotherapy side-effects. CFD modeling is used to design the membrane of the Chemofilter in order to optimize its hemodynamic performance. \textbf{Methods}: Multiscale approach is used to model blood flow through the Chemofilter. The toxins bind to the Chemofilter's membrane formed by a lattice of numerous micro cells deployed in a blood vessel of much larger size. A detailed model of the flow through a 2x2 microcell matrix with periodic boundary conditions is used to determine the permeability of the membrane. The results are used to simulate the flow through the whole device modeled as a uniform porous membrane. The finite-volume solver Fluent is used to obtain the numerical solution. \textbf{Results}: The micro cell matrix has a porosity of 0.92. The pressure drop across the resolved microcells was found to be 630 Pa, resulting in the permeability of 6.21 x10$^{\mathrm{-11}}$ m$^{\mathrm{2}}$ in the normal direction. These values were used to optimize the device geometry in order to increase the contact area of the membrane, while minimizing its obstruction to the flow.