Accounting for the geometry of the respiratory tract in viral infections

Abstract

Increasingly, experimentalists and modellers alike have come to recognise the important role of spatial structure in infection dynamics. Almost invariably, spatial computational models of viral infections — as with in vitro experimental systems — represent the tissue as wide and flat, which is often assumed to be representative of the entire affected tissue within the host. However, this assumption fails to take into account the distinctive geometry of the respiratory tract in the context of viral infections. The respiratory tract is characterised by a tubular, branching structure, and moreover is spatially heterogeneous: deeper regions of the lung are composed of far narrower airways and ar..