Zacharaki Evangelia I, Stamatakos Georgios S, Nikita Konstantina S, Uzunoglu Nikolaos K
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Division of Information Transmission Systems and Materials Technology, National Technical University of Athens, 9 Iroon Polytechniou, GR-15780 Zografos, Greece.
Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 2004 Dec;76(3):193-206. doi: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2004.07.003.
The goal of this paper is to provide both the basic scientist and the clinician with an advanced computational tool for performing in silico experiments aiming at supporting the process of biological optimisation of radiation therapy. Improved understanding and description of malignant tumour dynamics is an additional intermediate objective. To this end an advanced three-dimensional (3D) Monte-Carlo simulation model of both the avascular development of multicellular tumour spheroids and their response to radiation therapy is presented. The model is based upon a number of fundamental biological principles such as the transition between the cell cycle phases, the diffusion of oxygen and nutrients and the cell survival probabilities following irradiation. Efficient algorithms describing tumour expansion and shrinkage are proposed and applied. The output of the biosimulation model is introduced into the (3D) visualisation package AVS-Express, which performs the visualisation of both the external surface and the internal structure of the dynamically evolving tumour based on volume or surface rendering techniques. Both the numerical stability and the statistical behaviour of the simulation model have been studied and evaluated for the case of EMT6/Ro spheroids. Predicted histological structure and tumour growth rates have been shown to be in agreement with published experimental data. Furthermore, the underlying structure of the tumour spheroid as well as its response to irradiation satisfactorily agrees with laboratory experience.
本文的目标是为基础科学家和临床医生提供一种先进的计算工具，用于开展计算机模拟实验，旨在支持放射治疗的生物优化过程。更好地理解和描述恶性肿瘤动态是另一个中间目标。为此，本文提出了一种先进的三维（3D）蒙特卡罗模拟模型，用于模拟多细胞肿瘤球体的无血管发育及其对放射治疗的反应。该模型基于一些基本生物学原理，如细胞周期各阶段之间的转换、氧气和营养物质的扩散以及照射后细胞的存活概率。提出并应用了描述肿瘤生长和缩小的高效算法。生物模拟模型的输出被导入到（3D）可视化软件包AVS-Express中，该软件包基于体绘制或表面渲染技术对动态演变的肿瘤的外表面和内部结构进行可视化。针对EMT6/Ro球体的情况，研究并评估了模拟模型的数值稳定性和统计行为。预测的组织学结构和肿瘤生长速率已被证明与已发表的实验数据一致。此外，肿瘤球体的基础结构及其对辐射的反应与实验室经验相符。
