Volume 9, Number 1, p.p. 17–25
A multiscale agent-based model for the simulation of avascular tumour growth
J. Lepagnot and G. Hutzler
IBISC, FRE 3190, CNRS/Evry University, 523 Place des Terrasses, 91000 EVRY, France
An agent-based paradigm for the simulation of complex systems is based on the modelling of the individual entities of the system. Given a chosen level of description, this implies modelling each and every entity of the system. When modelling biological systems at the cellular and/or molecular level, this results in the simulation of multitudes of agents, which raises performance issues. However, it is generally not necessary to have the same level of detail in every part of the system. In this paper, we propose to introduce dynamically an aggregated level in the simulation of avascular tumour growth. This model handles cells and PAI-1 molecules that are believed to play a key rôle in the amoeboid migration of cancerous cells. However, migratory events can only be triggered on the periphery of the tumour. The interior can therefore be modelled in an aggregated way by replacing the individual cells and molecules by a global agent. We show that this can be done without changing the global dynamics of the system, and gaining a linear increase of computing time while the number of cells and molecules increases exponentially.
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