Evaluating the Influence of Hemorheological Parameters on Circulating Tumor Cell Trajectory and Simulation Time

Conference · Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3394277.3401848· OSTI ID:1649528

Roychowdhury, Sayan ^[1]; Gounley, John ^[2]; Randles, Amanda ^[3]

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1. Duke University
2. ORNL
3. Duke university Duhram, NC

Extravasation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) occurs primarily in the microvasculature, where flow and cell interactions significantly affect the blood rheology. Capturing cell trajectory at this scale requires the coupling of several interaction models, leading to increased computational cost that scales as more cells are added or the domain size is increased. In this work, we focus on micro-scale vessels and study the influence of certain hemorheological factors, including the presence of red blood cell aggregation, hematocrit level, microvessel size, and shear rate, on the trajectory of a circulating tumor cell. We determine which of the aforementioned factors significantly affect CTC motion and identify those which can potentially be disregarded, thus reducing simulation time. We measure the effect of these elements by studying the radial CTC movement and runtime at various combinations of these hemorheological parameters. To accurately capture blood flow dynamics and single cell movement, we perform high-fidelity hemodynamic simulations at a sub-micron resolution using our in-house fluid dynamics solver, HARVEY. We find that increasing hematocrit increases the likelihood of tumor cell margination, which is exacerbated by the presence of red blood cell aggregation. As microvessel diameter increases, there is no major CTC movement towards the wall; however, including aggregation causes the CTC to marginate quicker as the vessel size increases. Finally, as the shear rate is increased, the presence of aggregation has a diminished effect on tumor cell margination.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1649528
• Resource Relation: Conference: Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing Conference (PASC) - Geneva, , Switzerland - 6/29/2020 8:00:00 AM-7/1/2020 8:00:00 AM
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English