Perspectives on physics-based one-dimensional modeling of lung physiology

Aranyak Chakravarty^1,2Debjit Kundu²Mahesh Panchagnula²Alladi Mohan³Neelesh Patankar^4*

• ¹Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
• ²Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India
• ³Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences, Tirupati, India
• ⁴Northwestern University, Evanston, United States

The need to understand how infection spreads to the deep lung was acutely realized during the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. The challenge of modeling virus laden aerosol transport and deposition in the airways, coupled with mucus clearance, and infection kinetics, became evident. This perspective provides a consolidated view of coupled one-dimensional physics-based mathematical models to probe multifaceted aspects of lung physiology. Successes of 1D trumpet models in providing mechanistic insights into lung function and optimalities are reviewed while identifying limitations and future directions. Key non-dimensional numbers defining lung function are reported. The need to quantitatively map various pathologies on a physics-based parameter space of non-dimensional numbers (a virtual disease landscape) is noted with an eye on translating modeling to clinical practice. This could aid in disease diagnosis, get mechanistic insights into pathologies, and determine patient specific treatment plan. 1D modeling could, thus, be an important tool in developing novel measurement and analysis platforms that could be deployed at point-of-care.