BIOMECHANICAL MODELLING OF BIOLOGICAL TISSUES: IMPORTANCE TO TUMOR CLASSISIFICATION
Open Access
- Author:
- Palocaren, Antony J
- Area of Honors:
- Engineering Science
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Corina Stefania Drapaca, Thesis Supervisor
Corina Stefania Drapaca, Thesis Supervisor
Joseph Lawrence Rose, Honors Advisor
Judith A Todd Copley, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- Tumor Classification
- Abstract:
- ABSTRACT Biological tissues possess viscoelastic features, i.e. they have rigid characteristics as like solids, but also dissipate energy just as viscous fluids. Diseases change the mechanical properties of biological tissues. These changes of mechanical properties are caused either by the seepage of fluids into the intercellular space or by the loss of lymphatic fluids, as in the case of cancer. The result is usually an increase in stiffness or elastic modulus of the pathologic tissue. None of the modern, non-invasive, imaging techniques (such as CT, MR or Ultrasound Imaging) used today by clinicians to find and diagnose tumors, provide the critical information about the stiffness of the imaged tissues. In recent years a lot of progress has been made in implementing information about the Young’s modulus of tissues into the clinical imaging techniques. However, the biomechanical models used to find Young’s moduli of tissues fail to differentiate not only between normal and abnormal tissues but, more importantly, between benign and malignant (cancer) tumors. In this thesis we present a novel biomechanical model that uses information from image mass spectroscopy of tissues to classify low grade (benign) and high grade (malignant) gliomas based on the difference between their Young’s moduli. We also propose a new growth model for tumors that is dependent on the mechanical properties of tissues.