In Silico Design of Heterogeneous Microvascular Trees Using Generative Adversarial Networks and Constrained Constructive Optimization

Objective

Designing physiologically adequate microvascular trees is of crucial relevance for bioengineering functional tissues and organs. Yet, currently available methods are poorly suited to replicate the morphological and topological heterogeneity of real microvascular trees because the parameters used to control tree generation are too simplistic to mimic results of the complex angiogenetic and structural adaptation processes in vivo.

Methods

We propose a method to overcome this limitation by integrating a conditional deep convolutional generative adversarial network (cDCGAN) with a local fractal dimension-oriented constrained constructive optimization (LFDO-CCO) strategy. The cDCGAN learns the patterns of real microvascular bifurcations allowing for their artificial replication. The LFDO-CCO strategy connects the generated bifurcations hierarchically to form microvascular trees with a vessel density corresponding to that observed in healthy tissues.

Results

The generated artificial microvascular trees are consistent with real microvascular trees regarding characteristics such as fractal dimension, vascular density, and coefficient of variation of diameter, length, and tortuosity.

Conclusions

These results support the adoption of the proposed strategy for the generation of artificial microvascular trees in tissue engineering as well as for computational modeling and simulations of microcirculatory physiology.