Blood velocity pulse quantification in the human conjunctival pre-capillary arterioles

What is it about?

The term “velocity pulse” appeared 41 years ago (Rosenblum 1969) to describe the periodic change of velocity observed in the cerebral arterioles of mice. The objective of this work was the quantification of the velocity pulse in the precapillary arterioles of the human bulbar conjunctiva. The resistive index (RI) was used for the assessment of the pulsation, a well-known index of its use in the large arteries because it is not angle-dependent and has a low coefficient of variation.

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Why is it important?

The axial red blood cell velocity pulse is the principal quantity for the estimation of the average velocity AVV (average velocity value) during a cardiac cycle and of the average cross-sectional velocity Vs using a previously defined function (Koutsiaris 2005) that depends on the diameter (D) of the blood vessel and the diameter of the red blood cell. Then the average volume flow and average wall shear stress can be determined using fluid dynamics equations (Koutsiaris et al., 2007). All previous hemodynamic parameters are useful for the validation of theoretical models on vascular design, for the design of vascular targeted drug carriers and for the study of flow related micro mechanobiology and biochemistry of endothelium cells in health and disease.

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