Method of lines PDE analysis in biomedical science and engineering (Q2810198)

This book presents numerical routines related to certain reaction-diffusion evolutionary differential equations motivated by biomedical engineering. Each of the ten chapters has the following structure: first a problem is presented in tandem with its real-life motivation. Next, a numerical code aimed at solving the problem is discussed. The entire presentation is strongly biased towards immediate applications: the studied problems are often sketched without mathematical details and no analytical properties are mentioned, despite the fact that the problems themselves are rather straightforward reaction-diffusion PDEs or coupled PDEs/ODEs. This is partially balanced by Appendix A on a general reaction-diffusion-convection problem. The numerical part involves finite-difference approximations of PDEs (called here the `method of lines'), resulting in ODEs, solved by routines in the statistical computing package \texttt{R}, which is an unusual choice for PDEs. These routines are available on a companion website. Despite its certain shortages from the perspective of rigorous analysis or numerics, this book may serve as a useful source of real-life equations practically used in biomedical engineering. They are models for (chapterwise):NEWLINENEWLINE-- chromatographyNEWLINENEWLINE-- VEGF angiogenesisNEWLINENEWLINE-- thermographic tumor locationNEWLINENEWLINE-- blood-tissue transportNEWLINENEWLINE-- two fluid-membrane modelNEWLINENEWLINE-- liver support systemsNEWLINENEWLINE-- cross-diffusion epidemiologyNEWLINENEWLINE-- oncolytic virotherapyNEWLINENEWLINE-- tumor cell density in glioblastomasNEWLINENEWLINE-- antigen-antibody binding kinetics.