Direct comparison between dissipative particle dynamics simulation of blood flow and live imaging in zebrafish vasculature

Hemodynamic factors play crucial roles in various biological and medical phenomena, suggesting the significance of mechanical information. However, in-vivo measurement of local hemodynamic factors such as the blood flow velocity, the wall shear stress (WSS) and the blood pressure is still quite challenging. Therefore, a blood flow simulation can be a powerful alternative tool to obtain the hemodynamic parameters in real vasculatures. So far, large amount of studies on blood flow simulations and analyses in microcirculatory systems have been reported, while the thorough validation of the simulation results with experimental data is still lacking. In the present study, we develop and validate a framework to simulate the blood flow inside complex vascular structures of zebrafish based on dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) combined with the live imaging data. First, we construct a three-dimensional vascular network structure from a series of two-dimensional images. Then, the complex interaction between plasma and red blood cells is explicitly taken into account in DPD simulation. It is demonstrated that the present approach successfully reproduces the complex interactions between red blood cells and plasma inside the real vascular network of zebrafish.