Mass Transfer of Blood Oxygen in the Vessel

Mass transfer in the coronary artery plays an important role in the development of atherosclerosis and is one of the most important topics in the pathology of vascular diseases. In this article we studied oxygen transport in the avascular wall of a coronary artery by numerically solving the convection-diffusion equations. The governing equations for mass transfer of oxygen are studied and we could obtain the distribution of oxygen concentration in the vessel and the boundary condition and discussed effect of various factors such as the thickness of the avascular region and blood flow. Oxygen carried by hemoglobin and oxygen consumption in the vessel wall are important physiological parameters in this study. To validate the numerical solution we compare the distribution of the partial pressure of oxygen in the bottom section of the vessel with the current results and suitability is obtained. The results show that with increasing the flow, the minimum oxygen partial pressure in the artery wall is increased and with increasing the thickness of the wall, the minimum oxygen pressure is decreased. These results are useful for predicting the area susceptible to formation of atherosclerosis.

Keywords:

Oxygen transport , coronary artery , atherosclerosis , hypoxia , numerical methods