Essentially, I want to be able to calculate the amount of blood flow through a specific site in the body. For example, if I use radiation to treat a tumor volume in the breast or prostate or brain (or wherever), how much blood flows through the site over the treatment period?
Interesting. You might use transcranial doppler (TCD) ultrasonography to measure blood flow velocity. Your reference populations/samples are critical in the analysis of your data. Best!
That might work, but I'm thinking more along the lines of a computational model so I can use it to predict exposure to circulating blood. This might be a good way to generate the data to create a computational model, though.
Some papers that might help are:
Fukui Y & Smith NT. Anesthesiology 1981;54(2):107-118
Lanzarone E et al. Med Eng Phys 2007;29(5):542-555.
Snyder MF et al. J Biomech 1968;1(4):341-353.
These are models of a normal circulation however. I assume that the presence of a vascularized? tumor will alter the resistance of the vascular bed and hence the flow, so using one of these models may not be accurate for calculating flow in a patient (not to mention the effects of normal individual variations). I doubt the patient-specific resistance of a target vascular bed can be accurately estimated without some measurements of flow, which means this might be a chicken-or-egg problem. On the other hand, if you just want to do some modelling to investigate general principles and ball-park values, then tweaking one of the above models may be useful.
Thanks. I will take a look a the articles. Yes, blood flow would change in the tumor volume. However, I was just using a tumor as a relatively easy way to describe what I was looking for. I have several applications in mind that do not involve a tumor at all. For example, partial exposure due to shielding, etc. From your description, those papers may be just what I'm looking for. I'll have to see. Thanks again!
You might find this company interesting. Even though they do not really do the kind of work you are looking into, I believe with proper direction they might be able tailor make a system for you.
http://www.vascularsimulations.com/
We are investigating changes in cutaneous circulation due to thermal stimulation using laser doppler. Results are probably similar to the ones obtained by the TCD ultrasound, but focused on smaller vessels. We are trying to develop a model of autonomus regulation, hope I'll be able to forward it to you!
Thanks Jonathan P Mynard. If you need details about my model or codes do not hesitate asking.
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