The volumes in this authoritative series present a multidisciplinary
approach to modeling and simulation of flows in the cardiovascular and
ventilatory systems, especially multiscale modeling and coupled
simulations. Volume 5 is devoted to cells, tissues, and organs of the
cardiovascular and ventilatory systems with an emphasis on
mechanotransduction-based regulation of flow. The blood vessel wall is a
living tissue that quickly reacts to loads applied on it by the flowing
blood. In any segment of a blood vessel, the endothelial and smooth
muscle cells can sense unusual time variations in small-magnitude wall
shear stress and large-amplitude wall stretch generated by abnormal
hemodynamic stresses. These cells respond with a short-time scale (from
seconds to hours) to adapt the vessel caliber. Since such adaptive cell
activities can be described using mathematical models, a key objective
of this volume is to identify the mesoscopic agents and nanoscopic
mediators required to derive adequate mathematical models. The resulting
biomathematical models and corresponding simulation software can be
incorporated into platforms developed in virtual physiology for improved
understanding and training.