“Cell Invasions: Visual Computing, Health, and Cancer” by Lumsden
Conference:
SIGGRAPH Video Review:
Track:
- 10
Title:
- Cell Invasions: Visual Computing, Health, and Cancer
Length:
- 4:18
Director(s):
Company / Institution / Agency:
- University of Toronto
Description:
We are developing visual computing tools and simulation models to study the complex behavior of migrating cells in normal 3D tissue development and in major lethal disorders of cell migration such as cancer. Our tissue matrix models are implemented in Maya to lever-age the built-in physics engine and MEL language for the simula-tions. Tissue matrices were grown in silico with a nine-state random-walk algorithm to generate positions in 3-space for NURBS fiber axes. NURBS tubes were then extruded along each fiber axis to model the van der Waals contact surface of the fiber. A collision-avoidance procedure minimized fiber intersections. An exponential distribution of waiting times drove cell motion (defined by a multi-state Markov automaton) along their fiber contact points and the dis-placement between fibers. Migrations were studied at low and high tissue-matrix densities and a range of cell motion rules, in which we varied motion likelihoods on, around, and between the fibers of each 3D mesh. The persistent random-walk paths of the cells compared favorably with real cell behavior for some rule sets, but for others they identified a new class of cells, not yet observed experimentally, with aggressively multiphasic invasive motion.
Hardware:
Intel and Athlon Windows XP and Mac G4 systems
Software:
Maya 6, Adobe After Effects
Additional Contributors:
Director: Charles Lumsden, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto
Producers: Charles Lumsden, Nicholas Woolridge
CONTRIBUTORS
Direction, Production, Script, Storyboard: Charles Lumsden – Department of Medicine, University of Toronto
Production, Storyboard Nicholas Woolridge Division of Biomedical Communications, University of Toronto
Storyboard, Animation, Post-Production Jason Sharpe Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto
