Advanced computational workflow for the multi-scale modeling of the bone metabolic processes

Abstract

Multi-scale modeling of the musculoskeletal system plays an essential role in the deep understanding of complex mechanisms underlying the biological phenomena and processes such as bone metabolic processes. Current multi-scale models suffer from the isolation of sub-models at each anatomical scale. The objective of this present work was to develop a new fully integrated computational workflow for simulating bone metabolic processes at multi-scale levels. Organ-level model employs multi-body dynamics to estimate body boundary and loading conditions from body kinematics. Tissue-level model uses finite element method to estimate the tissue deformation and mechanical loading under body loading conditions. Finally, cell-level model includes bone remodeling mechanism through an agent-based simulation under tissue loading. A case study on the bone remodeling process located on the human jaw was performed and presented. The developed multi-scale model of the human jaw was validated using the literature-based data at each anatomical level. Simulation outcomes fall within the literature-based ranges of values for estimated muscle force, tissue loading and cell dynamics during bone remodeling process. This study opens perspectives for accurately simulating bone metabolic processes using a fully integrated computational workflow leading to a better understanding of the musculoskeletal system function from multiple length scales as well as to provide new informative data for clinical decision support and industrial applications.

A Multidisciplinary Journey towards Bone Tissue Engineering

“…The combination of a system-level model and organlevel model prevents many models from being successful, as they lead to misinterpretation of simulation outcomes. Dao et al have presented a fully integrated multiscale modeling workflow to account for the interscale synergies, applying the model to a case study on the bone remodeling process of the human jaw [154].…”