There are two main types of fluid in bone issue, blood and interstitial fluid. The chemical composition of these fluids varies with time and location in bone. Blood arrives through the arterial system containing oxygen and other nutrients, and the blood components depart via the venous system and the lymphatic system containing less oxygen and reduced nutrition. Within the bone, as within other tissues, substances pass from the blood through the arterial walls into the interstitial fluid. The movement of the interstitial fluid carries these substances to the cells encased in the matrix of the bone tissue and, at the same time, carries off the waste materials from the cells. Bone tissue would not live without these fluid movements. There are two purposes of this contribution. The first is to provide a description of blood flow and interstitial fluid flow in living bone tissue. The second is to advocate the development of an interactive, dynamically graphical, computational model of blood and interstitial flow in living bone tissue. Such a model will have many significant clinical, research and educational applications. These applications will be discussed.

1 Introduction

Blood and interstitial fluid have many functions in bone. They transport nutrients to, and carry waste from, the bone...