Biomedical subjects

B Sapoval

Publications and source records attributed to B Sapoval.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Restricted diffusion in a model acinar labyrinth by NMR: theoretical and numerical results.

A branched geometrical structure of the mammal lungs is known to be crucial for rapid access of oxygen to blood. But an important pulmonary disease like emphysema results in partial destruction of the alveolar tissue and enlargement of the distal airspaces, which may reduce the total oxygen transfer. This effect has been intensively studied during the last decade by MRI of hyperpolarized gases like helium-3. The relation between geometry and signal attenuation remained obscure due to a lack of realistic geometrical model of the acinar morphology. In this paper, we use Monte Carlo simulations of restricted diffusion in a realistic model acinus to compute the signal attenuation in a diffusion-weighted NMR experiment. We demonstrate that this technique should be sensitive to destruction of the branched structure: partial removal of the interalveolar tissue creates loops in the tree-like acinar architecture that enhance diffusive motion and the consequent signal attenuation. The role of the local geometry and related practical applications are discussed.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Brownian flights over a fractal nest and first-passage statistics on irregular surfaces.

The diffusive motion of Brownian particles near irregular interfaces plays a crucial role in various transport phenomena in nature and industry. Most diffusion-reaction processes in confining interfacial systems involve a sequence of Brownian flights in the bulk, connecting successive hits with the interface (Brownian bridges). The statistics of times and displacements separating two interface encounters are then determinant in the overall transport. We present a theoretical and numerical analysis of this complex first-passage problem. We show that the bridge statistics is directly related to the Minkowski content of the surface within the usual diffusion length. In the case of self-similar or self-affine interfaces, we show and check numerically that the bridge statistics follows power laws with exponents depending directly on the surface fractal dimension.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2006

Mathematical basis for a general theory of Laplacian transport towards irregular interfaces.

The theory of Laplacian transport towards and across irregular surfaces is reformulated in terms of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator and its spectral characteristics. This permits us to obtain an exact equivalent circuit for the impedance of a working interface of arbitrary shape. The important result is that only very few eigenmodes of this operator do govern the entire response of a macroscopic system. This property drastically simplifies the understanding of irregular or prefractal interfaces. The results can be applied in electrochemistry, physiology and chemical engineering, fields where exchange processes across surfaces with complex geometry are ubiquitous.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2005

Multifractal properties of the harmonic measure on Koch boundaries in two and three dimensions.

The multifractal properties of the harmonic measure on quadratic and cubic Koch boundaries are studied with the help of a new fast random walk algorithm adapted to these fractal geometries. The conjectural logarithmic development of local multifractal exponents is guessed for regular fractals and checked by extensive numerical simulations. This development allows one to compute the multifractal exponents of the harmonic measure with high accuracy, even with the first generations of the fractal. In particular, the information dimension in the case of the concave cubic Koch surface embedded in three dimensions is found to be slightly higher than its value D1 =2 for a smooth boundary.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2005

Diffusional screening in real 3D human acini--a theoretical study.

Gas exchange at the acinar level involves several physico-chemical phenomena within a complex geometry. A gas transport model, which takes into account both the diffusion into the acinus and the diffusion across the alveolar membrane, is used to understand gas mixing in realistic systems. It is first shown that the behaviour of the system, computed on model geometries in 3D, only depends on the topological structure of the acinus. Taking advantage of this property, a new efficient method based on random walks on a lattice is used to compute gas diffusion in structures taken from real morphological data. This approach shows that, at rest, the human acinus efficiency is only 30-40%. These results provide a new evidence of the existence of diffusional screening at the acinar level. This implies permanent spatial inhomogeneity of oxygen and carbon dioxide partial pressure. The notion of an "alveolar gas" is reinterpreted as a spatial average of the gas distribution. This model casts new light on the respiratory properties of other gas mixtures, such as helium-oxygen.

Cell Membrane Permeability↗

PubMed2005

Diffusion-reaction in branched structures: theory and application to the lung acinus.

An exact "branch by branch" calculation of the diffusional flux is proposed for partially absorbed random walks on arbitrary tree structures. In the particular case of symmetric trees, an explicit analytical expression is found which is valid whatever the size of the tree. Its application to the respiratory phenomena in pulmonary acini gives an analytical description of the crossover regime governing the human lung efficiency.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

Self-stabilized fractality of seacoasts through damped erosion.

Erosion of rocky coasts spontaneously creates irregular seashores. But the geometrical irregularity, in turn, damps the sea waves, decreasing the average wave amplitude. There may then exist a mutual self-stabilization of the wave amplitude together with the irregular morphology of the coast. A simple model of such stabilization is studied. It leads, through a complex dynamics of the earth-sea interface, to the appearance of a stationary fractal seacoast with a dimension close to 4/3. Fractal geometry here plays the role of a morphological attractor directly related to percolation geometry.

Biophysics↗

PubMed2004

An optimal bronchial tree may be dangerous.

The geometry and dimensions of branched structures such as blood vessels or airways are important factors in determining the efficiency of physiological processes. It has been shown that fractal trees can be space filling and can ensure minimal dissipation. The bronchial tree of most mammalian lungs is a good example of an efficient distribution system with an approximate fractal structure. Here we present a study of the compatibility between physical optimization and physiological robustness in the design of the human bronchial tree. We show that this physical optimization is critical in the sense that small variations in the geometry can induce very large variations in the net air flux. Maximum physical efficiency therefore cannot be a sufficient criterion for the physiological design of bronchial trees. Rather, the design of bronchial trees must be provided with a safety factor and the capacity for regulating airway calibre. Paradoxically, our results suggest that bronchial malfunction related to asthma is a necessary consequence of the optimized efficiency of the tree structure.

Asthma↗

PubMed2004

Renormalized random walk study of oxygen absorption in the human lung.

The possibility to renormalize random walks is used to study numerically the oxygen diffusion and permeation in the acinus, the diffusion cell terminating the mammalian airway tree. This is done in a 3D tree structure which can be studied from its topology only. The method is applied to the human acinus real morphology as studied by Haefeli-Bleuer and Weibel in order to compute the respiratory efficiency of the human lung. It provides the first quantitative evidence of the role of diffusion screening in real 3D mammalian respiration. The net result of this study is that, at rest, the efficiency of the human acinus is only of order 33%. Application of these results to CO2 clearance provides for the first time a theoretical support to the empirical relation between the O2 and CO2 partial pressures in blood.

Bronchi↗

PubMed2003

Transition from Knudsen to molecular diffusion in activity of absorbing irregular interfaces.

We investigate through molecular dynamics the transition from Knudsen to molecular diffusion transport towards two-dimensional absorbing interfaces with irregular geometry. Our results indicate that the length of the active zone decreases continuously with density from the Knudsen to the molecular diffusion regime. In the limit where molecular diffusion dominates, we find that this length approaches a constant value of the order of the system size, in agreement with theoretical predictions for Laplacian transport in irregular geometries. Finally, we show that all these features can be qualitatively described in terms of a simple random-walk model of the diffusion process.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2003

Interplay between geometry and flow distribution in an airway tree.

Uniform flow distribution in a symmetric volume can be realized through a symmetric branched tree. It is shown here, however, by 3D numerical simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations, that the flow partitioning can be highly sensitive to deviations from exact symmetry if inertial effects are present. The flow asymmetry is quantified and found to depend on the Reynolds number. Moreover, for a given Reynolds number, we show that the flow distribution depends on the aspect ratio of the branching elements as well as their angular arrangement. Our results indicate that physiological variability should be severely restricted in order to ensure adequate fluid distribution through a tree.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

Diffusional screening in the human pulmonary acinus.

In the mammalian lung acini, O(2) diffuses into quasi-static air toward the alveolar membrane, where the gas exchange with blood takes place. The O(2) flux is then influenced by the O(2) diffusivity, the membrane permeability, and the acinus geometric complexity. This phenomenon has been recently studied in an abstract geometric model of the acinus, the Hilbert acinus (Sapoval B, Filoche M, and Weibel ER, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99: 10411, 2002). This is extended here to a more realistic geometry originated from the morphological model of Kitaoka et al. (Kitaoka K, Tamura S, and Takaki R, J Appl Physiol 88: 2260-2268, 2000). Two-dimensional numerical simulations of the steady-state diffusion equation with mixed boundary conditions are used to quantify the process. The alveolar O(2) concentration, or partial pressure, and the O(2) flux are computed and show that diffusional screening exists at rest. These results confirm that smaller acini are more efficient, as suggested for the Hilbert acini.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2002

Increased damping of irregular resonators.

It is shown that fractal drums and jagged geometry resonators may be more damped than ordinary Euclidean systems. Several damping mechanisms are examined and studied by numerical calculations. The results depend on the dissipation mechanisms but globally they increase with localization, frequency, and the irregularity of the resonator. The increased dissipation is due to the uneven spatial distribution of the vibrational amplitude in two different ways. First, it is related to the partial confinement of the vibrational modes. Secondly, increased dissipation may be due to singularities in the amplitude distribution. This is the case when a few points exist where the vibration is pinned to zero inducing local logarithmic singularities. This last effect can be spectacular: a single defect can dominate the surface damping by viscous forces of a square drum.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2001

Field theory of self-organized fractal etching.

We propose a phenomenological field theoretical approach to the chemical etching of a disordered solid. The theory is based on a recently proposed dynamical etching model. Through the introduction of a set of Langevin equations for the model evolution, we are able to map the problem into a field theory related to isotropic percolation. To the best of the author's knowledge, this constitutes the first application of field theory to a problem of chemical dynamics. By using this mapping, many of the etching process critical properties are seen to be describable in terms of the percolation renormalization group fixed point. The emerging field theory has the peculiarity of being self-organized in the sense that without any parameter fine tuning the system develops fractal properties up to a certain scale controlled solely by the volume V of the etching solution. In the limit V-->infinity the upper cutoff goes to infinity and the system becomes scale invariant. We present also a finite size scaling analysis and discuss the relation of this particular etching mechanism to gradient percolation. Finally, the possibility of considering this mechanism as a generic path to self-organized criticality is analyzed, with the characteristics of being closely related to a real physical system and therefore more directly accessible to experiments.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2000

Diffusion-reorganized aggregates: attractors in diffusion processes?

A process based on particle evaporation, diffusion, and redeposition is applied iteratively to a two-dimensional object of arbitrary shape. The evolution spontaneously transforms the object morphology, converging to branched structures. Independently of initial geometry, the structures found after a long time present fractal geometry with a fractal dimension around 1.75. The final morphology, which constantly evolves in time, can be considered as the dynamic attractor of this evaporation-diffusion-redeposition operator. The ensemble of these fractal shapes can be considered to be the dynamical equilibrium geometry of a diffusion-controlled self-transformation process.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2000

Transfer across random versus deterministic fractal interfaces.

A numerical study of the transfer across random fractal surfaces shows that their responses are very close to the response of deterministic model geometries with the same fractal dimension. The simulations of several interfaces with prefractal geometries show that, within very good approximation, the flux depends only on a few characteristic features of the interface geometry: the lower and higher cutoffs and the fractal dimension. Although the active zones are different for different geometries, the electrode responses are very nearly the same. In that sense, the fractal dimension is the essential "universal" exponent which determines the net transfer.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2000

Surface hardening and self-organized fractality through etching of random solids

When a finite volume of etching solution is in contact with a disordered solid, complex dynamics of the solid-solution interface develop. If the etchant is consumed in the chemical reaction, the dynamics stop spontaneously on a self-similar fractal surface. As only the weakest sites are corroded, the solid surface gets progressively harder and harder. At the same time, it becomes rougher and rougher uncovering the critical spatial correlations typical of percolation. From this, the chemical process reveals the latent percolation criticality hidden in any random system. Recently, a simple minimal model was introduced by Sapoval et al. to describe this phenomenon. Through analytic and numerical study, we obtain a detailed description of the process. The time evolution of the solution corroding power and of the distribution of resistance of surface sites is studied in detail. This study explains the progressive hardening of the solid surface. Finally, this dynamical model appears to belong to the universality class of gradient percolation.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1996

Fractal geometry impact on nuclear relaxation in irregular pores.

We apply a fractal description of pore surface irregularity to study the nuclear relaxation of a confined liquid. From the introduction of a length characteristic of diffusive and surface relaxing properties we describe three different relaxation regimes. These regimes show that the nuclear relaxation can be drastically modified by pore surface irregularity.

Fractals↗