In-vivo Measurements of Blood Flow Characteristics in the Arterial Bifurcation Cascade Networks of Chicken Embryo

유정란 태아외부혈관의 단계적으로 분기되는 동맥 분지관 내부 혈액 유동특성의 in-vivo 계측

The arteries are very important in cardiovascular system and easily adapt to varying flow and pressure conditions by enlarging or shrinking to meet the given hemodynamic demands. The blood flow in arteries is dominated by unsteady flow phenomena due to heart beating. In certain circumstances, however, unusual hemodynamic conditions cause an abnormal biological response and often induce circulatory diseases such as atherosclerosis, thrombosis and inflammation. Therefore quantitative analysis of the unsteady pulsatile flow characteristics in the arterial blood vessels plays important roles in diagnosing these circulatory diseases. In order to verify the hemodynamic characteristics, in-vivo measurements of blood flow inside the extraembryonic arterial bifurcation cascade of chicken embryo were carried out using a micro-PIV technique. To analyze the unsteady pulsatile flow temporally, the (low images of RBCs were obtained using a high-speed CMOS camera at 250fps with a spatial resolution of $30{\mu}m\times30{\mu}m$ in the whole blood vessels. In this study, the unusual flow conditions such as flow separation or secondary flow were not observed in the arterial bifurcations. However, the vorticity has large values in the inner side of curvature of vessels. In addition, the mean velocity in the arterial blood vessel was decreased and pulsating frequency obtained by FFT analysis of velocity data extracted in front of the each bifurcation was also decreased as the bifurcation cascaded.