rule-based simulation of vein graft remodeling

Vascular adaptation following local injury occurs through a combination of intimal hyperplasia and wall (inward/outward) remodeling. Over the past two decades, researchers have applied a wide variety of approaches to investigate neointimal hyperplasia and vascular remodeling in an effort to identify novel therapeutic strategies. However, despite incremental progress over these decades, specific cause/effect links between hemodynamic factors, inflammatory biochemical mediators, cellular effectors, and vascular occlusive phenotype remain lacking. We propose in this paper a first cellular automata model to implement the feedback mechanism between environment condition described by continuous dynamic and tissue plasticity described at the cellular level with the cellular automata. We propose in particular a careful construction of the probabilistic rules of the model from in vitro experiments results that can be validated against in vivo data.