Breast Cancer Modeling

From Distributed Information and Intelligence Analysis Group

This goal of this project is to model and simulate breast tissue form and function. In particular we are interested in the formation and spread of breast cancer. This project takes a multi-scale approach to modeling. The main objective of the project is to accurately simulate breast cancer as it evolves through key clinical stages. We are specifically interested in using digital photographs of dissected breast tissue to initialize our simulation, which requires image processing/ computer vision techniques to segment individual cell nuclei. Given the segmented nuclei, we intend to form a mesh that represents the neighboring cell interactions. This mesh is used in modeling both the physical and chemical interactions between cells, which are modeled as agents. The physical forces between cells can be modeled as springs imbedded in the mesh, and chemical communication between cells is modeled using a distance based message passing scheme.

PARTNERS: Virginia Tech