Zusammenfassung
Fatty liver is a common disease in the western society. Different stimuli, such as obesity or abuse of alcohol, cause the liver to store fat within liver cells, the so called hepatocytes. This growth induced by storage of fat influences the perfusion of the overlying structures, i. e. sinusoids, liver lobules, liver lobes, and consequently the liver itself. The scales of these structures reach from few µm (size of a hepatocyte) to several cm (size of liver). In view of finite element (FE) simulations, the necessity of introducing different scales becomes obvious. For the description of growth effects in the liver the relevant quantities are: perfusion of the liver and amount of substances that are needed for production of fat (glycogen and fatty acids). In this work we present a multiphasic continuum mechanical model for the description of micro-perfusion in the liver lobule using a homogenized multiphasic approach based on the theory of porous media (TPM). Into this model we inserted a zero-dimensional (0D) kinetic model calculating rates of all relevant substances. So far, the model focuses on the time dependent and spatial zonation of glycogen, since production of fat heavily depends on the stored glycogen. Additionally, a possible method for incorporating fatty acids and therefor also growth will be presented. (\copyright 2014 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Nutzer
