蠕動運動の生物工学的研究

力学モデルによる腸管運動の解析

抄録

Peristalsis is one of the major mechanisms of fluid transport in many biological systems. The transport phenomena by peristalsis has recently become an object of engineers' interests, and many studies have been reported from fluid mechanical view points. The typical fluid transport model assumes peristalsis to be an infinite sinusoidal wave train traveling along the tube. However, the model is not appropriate for the analysis of actual intestinal movements because it can not represent such a motion that the wall of the tube is stretched by the intraluminal pressure.
The purpose of this study is to propose a new model which can evaluate the mechanical events of in vivo intestinal movements. The new model consists of a train of cylindrical short segments in consideration of mechanical property of the wall. Each segment contracts or expands according to the force difference between the circumferential tension of the wall and the intraluminal pressure.
This paper shows that the proposed model is described by simple matrix representation, and it gives proper mechanical events of various types of movements such as peristalsis or rhythmic segmentation.