---
title: "The tissue saturation view"
description: "The Review step's Tissue Saturation view: the compartments plotted against the gradient factors, and what the leading one tells you."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.divelogic.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# The tissue saturation view

import { TissueDemo } from "@/components/react/TissueDemo";
import { trimixDecoWithTissues } from "@/demo/plans";

The **Tissue Saturation** view is the answer to "why is the first stop
*there*". It plots the model's compartments across the whole dive, against the
gradient factors the plan was computed with.

## Reading it

- A **sparkline** across the top follows the leading compartment's
  gradient-factor percentage over the dive, with reference lines at the GF Low
  and GF High you set.
- The **heat map** below it holds one row per compartment, fast at the top and
  slow at the bottom, one column per moment, each cell coloured by how close
  that compartment is to its limit.
- **Elapsed minutes** run along the foot.

A trail links the leading compartment across the columns. The compartment
nearest its limit is the one setting the ceiling, and which one that is changes
as the dive runs: the fast compartments are in front early in the ascent, and by
the shallow stops the slow ones have taken over, which is why lowering GF High
costs so much more than lowering GF Low.

On a multi-level dive it is where a shallow second level stops looking like a
rest. The fast compartments off-gas at 20 m while the slow ones are still
loading.

## What it does not show

The view draws the Bühlmann compartments and the gradient-factor limits. Under
**Thalmann E-L** the ascent is decided a different way and the gradient factors
have no effect on it, so you are looking at a Bühlmann picture of a dive that
was not scheduled on Bühlmann. It is still informative about gas loading; it is
not the constraint that produced the stops. See
[Decompression models](/theory/models).

## On a rebreather

The graph follows the bailout selection. Select a scenario and the compartments
plotted are that scenario's: the tissue state at the bail point is inherited
from the loop dive up to that moment, and everything after it is the
open-circuit schedule.

## Next

[The models view](/planning/review-models) is the last of the five.
[Tissue compartments](/theory/tissues) covers what a compartment is and why
there are sixteen of them.

Source: https://docs.divelogic.ai/planning/review-tissues/index.mdx