Collapse of a lipid-coated nanobubble and subsequent liposome formation

We investigate the collapse of a lipid-coated nanobubble and subsequent formation of a lipid vesicle by coarse grained molecular dynamics simulations. A spherical nanobubble coated with a phospholipid monolayer in water is a model of an aqueous dispersion of phospholipids under negative pressure during sonication. When subjected to a positive pressure, the bubble shape deforms into an irregular spherical shape and the monolayer starts to buckle and fold locally. The local folds grow rapidly in multiple directions and forming a discoidal membrane with folds of various amplitudes. Folds of small amplitude disappear in due course and the membrane develops into a unilamellar vesicle via a bowl shape. Folds with large amplitude develop into a bowl shape and a multivesicular shape forms. The membrane shape due to bubble collapse can be an important factor governing the vesicular shape during sonication

Bicelle-to-Vesicle Transition of a Binary Phospholipid Mixture Guided by Controlled Local Lipid Compositions : A Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study

An essential step of nanoliposome formation in an aqueous lipid solution is the transition from discoidal lipid aggregate (bicelle) to vesicle. We here investigate the bicelle-vesicle transition of a binary lipid mixture of saturated and unsaturated phosphatidylcholine by performing nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations with the coarse-grained representation of di-palmitoyl-phosphatidyl-choline (DPPC) and di-linoleoyl-phosphatidyl-choline (DLiPC). When DPPC molecules of a stable DPPC bicelle are randomly replaced to DLiPC molecules, the transition occurs for higher apparent DLiPC concentrations. On the other hand, when the DPPC molecules only in the core region of the bicelle are replaced, the transition occurs even for lower apparent DLiPC concentrations. For the bicelle where the head and tail layers are, respectively, pure DPPC and DLiPC monolayers, the side of DLiPC monolayer becomes the concave surface of bending bicelle. Controlling the local lipid compositions in binary lipid bicelle has the potential to determine the success of vesicle formation and the direction of bicelle bending. Our findings help explain nanoliposome formation with sonication and give useful information for controlling encapsulation efficiencies of nanoliposomes

Os métodos computacionais em hemodinâmica

Até à última década do século XX, a investigação realizada em hemodinâmica limitava-se, essencialmente, a estudos baseados em métodos experimentais e modelos matemáticos. No entanto, no final do século XX, os avanços tecnológicos na área da computação e o custo mais baixo de aquisição propiciaram uma nova forma de investigar os factores hemodinâmicos em termos fisiológicos e patológicos. Tal como tem acontecido em diversas áreas da ciência, os métodos computacionais constituem um complemento bastante promissor para investigar e analisar uma série de mecanismos fisiológicos e patológicos existentes nos vários órgãos do corpo humano. Este artigo trata, portanto, dos métodos computacionais em hemodinâmica e faz uma breve descrição do processo e da aplicação destes métodos no estudo do escoamento sanguíne

Analysis of velocity profiles of blood flow in microchannels using confocal micro-PIV and particle method

The combination of computational and experimental investigations provides an excellent approach to understand complex phenomena involved at a microscopic level. This paper emphasizes a new experimental technique capable to quantify the flow patterns inside microchannels with high spatial and temporal resolution. This technique, known as confocal micro-PIV, consists of a spinning disk confocal microscope, high speed camera and a diodepumped solid state (DPSS) laser. Velocity profiles of physiological fluids were measured within different microchannels. The measured results agree reasonably well with the predicted analytical values. This new PIV system is a very promising technique to confirm the validity of the data obtained by numerical simulations, such as the MPS particle method

Confocal micro-PIV measurements of blood flow in microchannels

The detail measurements of velocity profiles of blood flow in microchannels are fundamental for a better understanding on the biomechanics of the microcirculation. It is therefore very important to obtain measurements with high accuracy and spatial resolution of the influence of the blood cells on the plasma flow behaviour. This paper presents and compares measurements of in vitro blood with different hematocrits within a square microchannel obtained by a confocal particle image velocimetry (PIV) system. This emerging technology by combining the conventional PIV system with a spinning confocal microscope has the ability to obtain not only high spatial resolution images but also three-dimensional (3D) optical sectioning velocity measurements. Velocity measurements of plasma seeded with 1 ~tm diameter fluorescent particles were performed at different locations along the depth of 100 ~tm square microchannel at a constant flow rate (0.15~tl/min) and Reynolds number (Re) of 0.025. By using our confocal micro-PIV system, it was possible to obtain time-series of instantaneous velocity profiles with high spatial resolution of 28.24 18.83 ~tm at time intervals of 5 ms between two images. The ensemble-averaged velocity results of blood flow with different hematocrits (up to 25%) have shown velocity profiles very close to a parabolic shape. However, by analysing the temporal variance of the instantaneous velocity profiles of different hematocrits, we have observed a substantial increase of the instantaneous velocity fluctuations by increasing the hematocrit within the plasma flow. Besides, some possible effects from the measurements accuracy and flow rate instabilities from the syringe pump, this observation also suggests that there is a direct correlation between the level of hematocrit and the temporal instantaneous velocity fluctuations

Confocal micro-PIV measurements of three-dimensional profiles of cell suspension flow in a square microchannel

A detailed measurement of the blood flow velocity profile in microchannels in vitro is fundamental to better understand the biomechanics of microcirculation. Therefore it is very important to determine the influence of suspended blood cells on the flow behaviour with high accuracy and spatial resolution. We measured the flow of blood cells suspended in a physiological fluid within a square microchannel using a confocal particle image velocimetry (PIV) system and compared it to pure water. This emerging technology combines a conventional PIV system with a spinning confocal microscope and has the ability to obtain high-resolution images and three-dimensional (3D) optical section velocity measurements. The good agreement obtained between the measured and estimated results suggests that macroscale flow theory can be used to predict the flow behaviour of a homogeneous fluid within a 100 μm square microchannel. Our results also demonstrated the potential of the confocal system for generating 3D profiles and consequently obtaining detailed information on microscale effects in microchannels using both homogeneous and non-homogeneous fluids, such as a suspension of blood cells. Furthermore, the results obtained from our confocal micro-PIV system show the ability of this system to measure velocities up to 0.52 mm s−1 in a blood cell suspension fluid

Velocity measurements of physiological flows in microchannels using a confocal micro-PIV system

The detail measurements of velocity profiles of in vitro blood flow in micorchannels are fundamental for a better understanding on the biomechanics of the microcirculation. Despite the high amount of research in microcirculation, there is not yet any detailed experimental information about flow velocity profiles, RBCs deformability and aggregation in microvessels (diameter in the order of 100μm or less). These lack of knowledge is mainly due to the absence of adequate techniques to measure and quantitatively evaluate fluid mechanical effects at a microscopic level [1, 2]. During the years the most research work in this area has focused in experimental studies using techniques such as laser Doppler anemometry (LDA) or conventional particle image velocimetry (PIV). However, due to limitations of those techniques to study effects at a micro-scale level, Meinhart and his colleagues [3] have proposed a measurement technique that combines the PIV system with an inverted epi-fluorescent microscope, which increases the resolution of the conventional PIV systems [3]. More recently, considerable progress in the development of confocal microscopy and consequent advantages of this microscope over the conventional microscopes [4, 5] have led to a new technique known as confocal micro-PIV. This technique combines the conventional PIV system with a spinning disk confocal microscope (SDCM). Due to its outstanding spatial filtering technique together with the multiple point light illumination system, this kind of microscope has the ability to obtain in-focus images with optical thickness less than 1 μm, task extremely difficult to be achieved by using a conventional microscope. As a result, by combining SDCM with the conventional PIV system it is possible to achieve a PIV system with not only extremely high spatial resolution but also with capability to generate 3D velocity profiles. The main purpose of the present study is to evaluate the performance of our confocal micro-PIV system in order to investigate its ability to study the behaviour of non-homogenous fluids such as physiological fluids

Performance assessment of displacement-field estimation of the human left atrium from 4D-CT images using the coherent point drift algorithm

Background: Cardiac four-dimensional computed tomography (4D-CT) imaging is a standard approach used to visualize left atrium (LA) deformation for clinical diagnosis. However, the quantitative evaluation of LA deformation from 4D-CT images is still a challenging task. We assess the performance of LA displacement-field estimation from 4D-CT images using the coherent point drift (CPD) algorithm, which is a robust point set alignment method based on the expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm. Method: Subject-specific LA surfaces at 20 phases/cardiac cycles were reconstructed from 4D-CT images and expressed as sets of triangular elements. The LA surface at the phase that maximized the LA surface area was assigned as the control LA surface and those at the other 19 phases were assigned as observed LA surfaces. The LA displacement-field was estimated by solving the alignment between the control and observation LA surfaces using CPD. Results: Global correspondences between the estimated and observed LA surfaces were successfully confirmed by quantitative evaluations using the Dice similarity coefficient and differences of surface area for all phases. The surface distances between the estimated and observed LA surfaces ranged within 2 mm, except at the left atrial appendage and boundaries, where incomplete data, such as missing or false detections, were included on the observed LA surface. We confirmed that the estimated LA surface displacement and its spatial distribution were anisotropic, which is consistent with existing clinical observations. Conclusion: These results highlight that the LA displacement field estimated by CPD robustly tracks global LA surface deformation observed in 4D-CT images