Collateral Flow Network in Peripheral Artery Disease

When a femoral or popliteal artery narrows or occludes in peripheral artery disease, the limb does not simply lose its blood supply — a network of pre-existing small collateral vessels around the lesion enlarges over time to reroute flow, a process called arteriogenesis. This simulator builds a real lumped-parameter hemodynamic model of that bypass: the stenosed segment and its parallel collateral vessels form a resistor network governed by the Hagen–Poiseuille law, and animated particles trace the actual computed flow through each path, speeding into a visible jet at a tight stenosis. Adjust stenosis severity, collateral count and perfusion pressure to see how flow redistributes, then start the remodeling feedback loop to watch elevated wall shear stress in the narrow collaterals drive their outward growth, exactly the biology that determines whether a patient with PAD develops disabling claudication or compensates well enough to stay asymptomatic.