Aqueous humor dynamics under segmental flow conditions

Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma is an asymptomatic ocular disease and according to the World Health Organization, the pathology ranks the second place in order to cause of blindness worldwide. The causes that could lead to the development of Glaucoma are under discussion, but it is well-known that the main risk factor is high intraocular pressure; the intraocular pressure is depending on the aqueous humor resistance in the drainage system of the eye.

The present work describes the motion of aqueous humor through the anterior chamber and the trabecular drainage system, considering the segmental flow (heterogeneous trabecular meshwork) and non-segmental flow (homogeneous trabecular meshwork). The 3D computational model, implemented into the open-source software, was reconstructed from an optical coherence tomography. The model has been employed to simulate the aqueous humor dynamics considering buoyancy effects. The presence of the anterior chamber, the trabecular meshwork, and the Schlemm’s canal were taken into consideration with four real distributions of collector channels and one idealized arrangement of channels. The influence of collector channels position on the intraocular pressure and shear stress has been analyzed, for a homogeneous and heterogeneous trabecular meshwork condition. Aqueous humor velocity, pressure, temperature, wall shear stress, skin friction coefficient, and Nusselt number, are presented for the different cases. The results indicate that the position of the collector channels has a strong influence on the wall shear stress on the Schlemm’s canal and collector channels.