Department of Mechanical Engineering, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, 19085, USA.
Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito Exterior S/N, Ciudad Universitaria, CP04510, Coyoacán, Ciudad de México, Mexico.
Sci Rep. 2020 Oct 1;10(1):16194. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-73208-8.
The liver is not only the largest organ in the body but also the one playing one of the most important role in the human metabolism as it is in charge of transforming toxic substances in the body. Understanding the way its blood vasculature works is key. In this work we show that the challenge of predicting the hepatic multi-scale vascular network can be met thanks to the constructal law of design evolution. The work unveils the structure of the liver blood flow architecture as a combination of superimposed tree-shaped networks and porous system. We demonstrate that the dendritic nature of the hepatic artery, portal vein and hepatic vein can be predicted, together with their geometrical features (diameter ratio, duct length ratio) as the entire blood flow architectures follow the principle of equipartition of imperfections. At the smallest scale, the shape of the liver elemental systems-the lobules-is discovered, while their permeability is also predicted. The theory is compared with good agreement to anatomical data from the literature.
肝脏不仅是人体最大的器官，也是人体新陈代谢中最重要的器官之一，因为它负责转化体内的有毒物质。了解其血管系统的工作方式是关键。在这项工作中，我们表明，由于设计进化的构造法则，预测肝脏多尺度血管网络的挑战是可以克服的。这项工作揭示了肝血流结构作为叠加树状网络和多孔系统的组合。我们证明，肝动脉、门静脉和肝静脉的树突状性质可以被预测，以及它们的几何特征（直径比、管长比），因为整个血流结构遵循不完美的等分原理。在最小的尺度上，发现了肝单元系统-肝小叶的形状，同时也预测了它们的渗透性。该理论与文献中的解剖学数据吻合较好。
