A computational study of the effect of vasomotion on oxygen transport from capillary networks

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of arteriolar vasomotion on oxygen transport from capillary networks. A computational model was used to calculate blood flow and oxygen transport from a simulated network of striated muscle capillaries. For varying tissue oxygen consumption rates, the importance of the frequency and amplitude of vasomotion-induced blood flow oscillations was studied. The effect of myoglobin on oxygen delivery during vasomotion was also examined. In the absence of myoglobin, it was found that when consumption is high enough to produce regions of hypoxia under steady flow conditions, vasomotion-induced flow oscillations can significantly increase tissue oxygenation and decrease oxygen transport heterogeneity. The largest effect was seen for low-frequency, high-amplitude oscillations (1.5-3 cycles min^-1, 90% of steady-state velocity). By contrast, at physiological tissue myoglobin concentrations, vasomotion did not improve tissue oxygenation. This unexpected finding is due to the buffering effect of myoglobin, suggesting that in highly aerobic muscles short-term storage of oxygen is more important than the possibility of increasing transport through vasomotion.