New model of arterial thrombus formation is similar to popular video game

This is cool. With some innovative thinking we should be able to come up with a way to disrupt that wave aggregation process. It would have to be much better than going down the stupid route of reducing cholesterol.
Your doctor should be able to explain this version vs. this earlier video of plaque formation.
Inflammation In Atherosclerotic Plaque Formation  
 

New model of arterial thrombus formation is similar to popular video game
A group of biophysicists, including representatives from MIPT, has developed a mathematical model of arterial thrombus formation, which is the main cause of heart attacks and strokes. The scientists described the process of platelet aggregation as being similar to the popular video game Tetris and derived equations that allowed them to reproduce the wave process of platelet aggregate formation in a blood vessel.

Activated thrombocyte on a slide with immobilized fibrinogen, one of the proteins found in the blood. Scanning electron microscopy. Photograph courtesy of Sergey Obydenny / Wikimedia

Researchers from the Dmitry Rogachev Federal Research and Clinical Center of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Immunology (FRCC PHOI), the Center for Theoretical Problems of Physico-Chemical Pharmacology, MIPT, Moscow State University, the Institute for Problems of Mechanical Engineering (St Petersburg), and the Free University of Berlin described the new model in the journal PLOS ONE. When discussing the development of the model and the members of the research team, Mikhail Panteleev, one of the authors of the publication, said:
“Fazly Ataullakhanov and I formulated the problem and derived the equation, and Evgenia Babushkina (now a graduate student in Berlin), under the guidance of her mentor Nikolay Bessonov, developed solution methods for the two-dimensional case taking into account the changing hydrodynamics of the flow in which the thrombus is formed. She also performed all the simulations and analyses. Fazly and I are professors of the Department of Translational and Regenerative Medicine of MIPT’s Faculty of Biological and Medical Physics, which is based at FRCC PHOI”.
Develpoment of a continuous adsorption equation under assumption that thrombus formation occurs in the same way as the tiles become stacked up in the classic video game Tetris is a key aspect of the new model. In Tetris, the tiles either drop down onto a flat surface, or become attached to parts sticking out from the rest of the block. The only difference between thrombus formation and the game is that when a layer is complete, it does not disappear, therefore as time passes a thrombus is capable of obstructing the space it is in. In addition, the falling shapes are always the same: the model describes the aggregation of platelets, specialized blood cells.
Having described the mathematical process of how vacant areas on the surface of a growing thrombus are filled, the scientists were able to build first a one-dimensional model (as in Tetris), and then a two-dimensional model (platelets are deposited in a dimensional plane). And at one point, the scientists began to consider certain platelets as being infinitely small, and the thrombus itself as being continuous; in other words, the scientists went from a discrete model to a continuous model.

• Discrete model: the system under study consists of individual particles, and the behaviour of each particle can be tracked individually. This makes it possible to simulate, for example, gas molecules in the problem of Brownian motion – representing each molecule as a particle colliding with a larger particle.
• Continuous model: the system under study consists of solid objects that can freely change their size or any other characteristic. This can be used to model temperature increase in a functioning boiler for example – the output will be the temperature field in the volume under study.

The sequential solution of the equations obtained enabled the researchers to reproduce the dynamics of the growth of a real thrombus and study its behaviour under various conditions – in the case of damage to the vascular wall for example.
Active media and autowaves
In their paper, the researchers emphasize that the process of thrombus formation resembles a travelling wave, and this similarity is by no means accidental. It was previously demonstrated that the thrombus formation process is like an autowave – the blood, which carries blood platelets and a number of special proteins for blood coagulation, is an active medium. At that time the conclusion drawn by the researchers was concerned with blood coagulation as a result of a cascade of biochemical reactions involving proteins, but it is also possible to talk of an active medium in the case of adhered platelets.