B. R. Duling

B. R. Duling investigated the microcirculation, including how blood components occupy the internal space of capillaries. A 1996 study with H. Vink compared anatomical capillary dimensions with the domains available to flowing blood cells and macromolecules.^[ref]

The comparison addressed the endothelial glycocalyx, a surface layer at the blood-facing side of the endothelium. A space bounded by the vessel wall need not be equally accessible to every circulating component. Fluorescence microscopy and observations of moving blood cells provided different views of that same microvascular space.^[ref]

For a geometric example, an accessible circular radius of $4$ units inside an anatomical radius of $5$ units gives an accessible area fraction $4^2/5^2=0.64$. The numbers are illustrative, not experimental measurements. They show why a modest difference in apparent width can matter when estimating available space.