Isabel Schwermer

Ice2cell seeks to transfer breakthrough methods from glaciology to the study of anisotropic blood flow. By representing red blood cell orientations as a smooth evolving field, ice2cell will develop a computationally efficient framework that directly links cell-scale orientation dynamics to bulk blood flow.

Blood is usually modelled as a simple homogeneous fluid, but this overlooks that red blood cells are soft, elastic, and can strongly influence how blood flows. The way red blood cells orient, tumble, and align with flow can change how viscous blood is, which is important for processes such as clot formation, transport of drugs, and the functioning of medical devices.

Ice2cell will adapt a modelling framework created to understand how ice crystals line up and influence the flow of glaciers. We will use the same idea to describe how red blood cells orient in blood flow. We will develop a framework for how red blood cell orientations evolve, derive how these orientations influence bulk flow, and validate the model results by comparing them with lab measurements.

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