A crevice bubble growth model for the analysis of decompression sickness

Decompression sickness is a series of symptoms associated with the formation of bubbles in the body during decompression. Bubbles have been observed both stationary in the tissues and moving with the blood. It has been proposed that the bubbles observed in the blood grow directly on the vessel walls. A possible mechanism for this is the growth of bubbles in sites resembling crevices in the endothelium. A crevice bubble growth model is derived based on existing tissue bubble models and tested with physiologically realistic parameters. © 2005 IEEE