Energy Spectrum Analysis on a Red Blood Cell Model

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to accurately determine parameters of a red blood cell model by analyzing the energy spectra of membrane fluctuations, enhancing the model's physical realism.

Contribution

A novel spectral analysis approach for precise parameter estimation in coarse-grained red blood cell models based on fluctuation spectra.

Findings

Characteristic peaks in fluctuation spectra depend on model parameters

Spectral peaks from spring and volume-conserving potentials identified

Method enables accurate experimental parameter determination

Abstract

It is important to understand the dynamics of red blood cells (RBCs) in blood flow. This requires the formulation of coarse-grained RBC models that reproduce the hydrodynamic properties of blood accurately. One of the models that successfully reproduce the rheology and morphology of blood has been proposed by Fedosov et al. [D. A. Fedosov, B. Caswell, and G. E. Karniadakis, Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng., Vol. 199, 1937-1948 (2010)]. The proposed RBC model contains several parameters whose values are determined either by various experiments or physical requirements. In this study, we developed a new method of determining the parameter values precisely from the fluctuations of the RBC membrane. Specifically, we studied the relationship between the spectra of the fluctuations and model parameters. Characteristic peaks were observed in the spectra, whose peak frequencies were dependent on the parameter values. In addition, we investigated the spectra of the radius of gyration. We identified the peaks originating from the spring potential and the volume-conserving potential appearing in the spectra. These results lead to the precise experimental determination of the parameters used in the RBC model.