Oxygenation of the Intraportally Transplanted Pancreatic Islet

Figure 1

Schematic depicting the intraportal islet which is modeled as a spherical body containing viable oxygen-consuming cells. The transplanted islet is lodged at a bifurcation in a distal hepatic sinusoid and has access to portal blood at its proximal half-surface. The distal half of the islet equilibrates with the surrounding environment and is modeled by the presence of a no-flux boundary condition at a specified distance away from its back surface (). There are 4 parameters that are adjusted in this model, including () fractional viability, or oxygen consumption rate normalized to DNA content (OCR/DNA); () islet diameter (); () external blood (); and () presence or absence of thrombus with a specified thickness (), located only on the proximal half-surface.