Modeling the electrophysiological activities of breast tumors with different morphologies

Recently, a diffusion-drift model was developed to simulate the biopotential signals and the electric current densities generated by single and few dividing MCF-7 cells, the most studied breast cancer cell line. In this work, the modeling is extended to simulate tumors containing hundreds of dividing MCF-7 cells. The dividing cells are assembled into realistic tumor patterns generated from a multiple-nutrient tumor growth model. Primarily, three tumor patterns are investigated: papillary, comedo and compact. The numerical results show that the tumor induced biopotentials vary significantly with the tumor pattern. In addition, complex tumor patterns can result in a shift of the point of maximum biopotential away from the center of the tumor. These observations can be utilized in the future advancement of the biopotential detection of breast cancer.