Rapid simulation of organ-scale oxygen transport for tissue ischemia prediction
- 1Stanford University
Abstract
A densely vascularized tissue can still be starved of oxygen. Tissue oxygenation depends heavily on vessel arrangement, blood flow distributions, and cellular metabolism. Resolving these effects from individual constituent vessels to whole organs has historically been computationally prohibitive. We introduce the Cardiovascular Analysis and Simulation of Circulatory Advection, Diffusion, and Exchange (CASCADE) toolkit, which makes vessel-resolved oxygen transport tractable at the organ scale through a novel screened Green's-function formulation. On laptop-class hardware, CASCADE simulates networks containing thousands of vessels in under one second and a full biventricular human heart model in about two minutes. We validate spatial oxygen and cell-survival predictions against experiments in perfused engineered tissues and matched finite-element simulations. In engineered tissues, sweeps across thousands of network designs and physiological conditions reveal when vessel density, oxygen supply, or network architecture limits viability, establishing design rules for sustaining thick constructs. In a human heart model, CASCADE translates coronary occlusion, anemia, polycythemia, and hypoxemia into distinct myocardial oxygenation patterns, revealing where oxygen delivery fails and how much tissue is at risk.
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BibTeX
@misc{kohnke2026rapid,
title = {{Rapid simulation of organ-scale oxygen transport for tissue ischemia prediction}},
author = {C. A. Kohnke and Y. L. Tan and I. A. Coates and Z. A. Sexton and A. L. Marsden and J. M. DeSimone and E. S. G. Shaqfeh},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.08.757708},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.08.757708v1},
note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Rapid simulation of organ-scale oxygen transport for tissue ischemia prediction
AU - C. A. Kohnke
AU - Y. L. Tan
AU - I. A. Coates
AU - Z. A. Sexton
AU - A. L. Marsden
AU - J. M. DeSimone
AU - E. S. G. Shaqfeh
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/08
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.08.757708
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.08.757708v1
AB - A densely vascularized tissue can still be starved of oxygen. Tissue oxygenation depends heavily on vessel arrangement, blood flow distributions, and cellular metabolism. Resolving these effects from individual constituent vessels to whole organs has historically been computationally prohibitive. We introduce the Cardiovascular Analysis and Simulation of Circulatory Advection, Diffusion, and Exchange (CASCADE) toolkit, which makes vessel-resolved oxygen transport tractable at the organ scale through a novel screened Green's-function formulation. On laptop-class hardware, CASCADE simulates networks containing thousands of vessels in under one second and a full biventricular human heart model in about two minutes. We validate spatial oxygen and cell-survival predictions against experiments in perfused engineered tissues and matched finite-element simulations. In engineered tissues, sweeps across thousands of network designs and physiological conditions reveal when vessel density, oxygen supply, or network architecture limits viability, establishing design rules for sustaining thick constructs. In a human heart model, CASCADE translates coronary occlusion, anemia, polycythemia, and hypoxemia into distinct myocardial oxygenation patterns, revealing where oxygen delivery fails and how much tissue is at risk.
ER -