Multiscale Computational Models for Respiratory Aerosol Dynamics with Medical Applications

Inhalation of therapeutic drug aerosols is now becoming a novel way to administer micro/nanoparticles or vapors to treat lung and systemic diseases. Several attempts of such deliveries have been made at least in experimental analyses on asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lung hypoxia, edema, lung injury, lung transplantation fungal infection, pulmonary fibrosis, and lung cancer. However, due to certain design deficiencies, existing pulmonary drug delivery devices still have poor efficiencies for delivering drugs to designated sites. Significant portions of the aggressive medicine deposit on healthy tissues, which causes severe side effects and induces extra healthcare expenses. "erefore, it is an urgent need to understand the aerosol drug dynamics better and develop a revolutionary patient-specific pulmonary drug delivery method and device to improve therapeutic outcomes by significantly improving drug delivery efficacy significantly. Due to the invasive nature and imaging resolution limitations, clinical and animal studies are not able to provide the high-resolution data for the researcher to understand the particle dynamics in human lung airways. Compared to experimental investigations, accurate and realistic computer simulation models would significantly contribute to reducing the research time and cost and visualize drug transport and translocation to multiple health endpoints via the pulmonary route.