title: The Importance of Neighborhood Scheme Selection in Agent-based Tumor Growth Modeling.
abstract: Modeling tumor growth has proven a very challenging problem, mainly due to the fact that tumors are highly complex systems that involve dynamic interactions spanning multiple scales both in time and space. The desire to describe interactions in various scales has given rise to modeling approaches that use both continuous and discrete variables, known as hybrid approaches. This work refers to a hybrid model on a 2D square lattice focusing on cell movement dynamics as they play an important role in tumor morphology, invasion and metastasis and are considered as indicators for the stage of malignancy used for early prognosis and effective treatment. Considering various distributions of the microenvironment, we explore how Neumann vs. Moore neighborhood schemes affects tumor growth and morphology. The results indicate that the importance of neighborhood selection is critical under specific conditions that include i) increased hapto/chemo-tactic coefficient, ii) a rugged microenvironment and iii) ECM degradation.
authors.affiliation: Computational BioMedicine Laboratory, Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas, Heraklion, Greece.
authors.forename: Georgios
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tzedakis
authors.affiliation: Computational BioMedicine Laboratory, Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas, Heraklion, Greece.
authors.forename: Eleftheria
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tzamali
authors.affiliation: Computational BioMedicine Laboratory, Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas, Heraklion, Greece.
authors.forename: Kostas
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Marias
authors.affiliation: Computational BioMedicine Laboratory, Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas, Heraklion, Greece.
authors.forename: Vangelis
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Sakkalis
keywords: Moore neighborhood; cancel modeling; cellular automata; hybrid simulation; hybrid tumor model; in silico experiment; medical computing; tumors; von Neumann neighborhood