Research > Sinusoidal Segment Interactive 3D Visualization

Sinusoidal Segment Interactive 3D Visualization

Executable file is available upon request

Description

This movie is an interactive 3D visualization of antipyrine & sucrose compounds percolating through one (#7 out of about 60) Sinusoidal Segment in the In Silico Liver (over 400 time steps). The three grid spaces (pink: sinusoidal, yellow: endothelial, and blue: space of the space of Disse plus hepatocytes) are rendered as concentric cylinders. Two views are provided of these cylinders. One is a side view (upper right) and the other is a head-on view (lower left). At the lower right the raw grid data is directly represented.

For each grid space point there are several options:

• It can be empty, that is, no cell there (rendered as fully transparent)
• It can contain an empty cell (rendered as mostly transparent white)
• It can contain antipyrine or sucrose particles outside of a cell (red or green)
• It can contain a cell with one or more free antipyrine particles within it.
• It can contain a cell with one or more bound antipyrine particles within it. For example: “3 bound” means 3 bound antipyrine particles in a cell.

Each “smooth” control on the upper left is used to distinguish the spaces; it causes the grid data to be blurred or not. The blurring is being applied as a texture to a cylinder and could be viewed as representing the likelihood that a compound of that type is actually in that location.

The “Show” control selects the space (Sinusoidal, Endothelial and Space of Disse & Hepatocytes (SoD) to be observed (or not).

Selecting “Rotate” causes the cylinder to rotate.

The “>||” and “||<” controls causes in silico time to move one step forward or backward.

Notes:

• Compounds are injected into the In Silico Liver using a tight distribution function;
• Antipyrine, but not sucrose, can enter cells;
• There are objects within “cells” that can bind antipyrine;
• Antipyrine bound within “hepatocytes” in the Disse layer can be metabolized.
• Metabolites of antipyrine are not visualized;
• In this movie there is no more than one free solute per cell.

To view the movie you need Macromedia Shockwave Player 10 running on a late-model computer (Mac or Win) with openGL and hardware 3D acceleration.

For additional biological and pharmacokinetic detail see:

Hung DY, Chang P, Weiss M, Roberts MS.(2001) Structure-hepatic disposition relationships for cationic drugs in isolated perfused rat livers: transmembrane exchange and cytoplasmic binding process. J Pharmacol Exp Ther. 297:780-9.