Finite element model to study effect of source geometry on calcium distribution in cylindrical shaped neuron cell

The study of calcium diffusion in neuron cells has gained interest among researchers during the last two decades, due to its wide variety of roles in human body like muscles contraction, secretion, metabolism, signal transduction etc. Most of the theoretical investigations on calcium diffusion in neurons have been carried out for one and two dimensional cases by various research workers and that too by incorporating a point source of influx. In order to have more realistic study a three dimensional model of calcium diffusion in a cylindrical shaped neuron cells has been developed in this paper. Apart from the point source, the line and surface sources of an influx of Ca²⁺ have been incorporated in the model. Appropriate boundary conditions have been framed. The region is discretized using three dimensional circular sectored elements. Variational finite element method has been employed to obtain the solution. The numerical results have been used to study effect of point source, line source and surface source of an influx on Ca²⁺ distribution in neuron cell.