2D reaction-diffusion model-based biopsy simulation for dynamic tumor growth parameter estimation

Once diagnosed, cancer requires a fast, reliable and preferably cost-efficient assessment of the current state and potential progression of the disease. A new method for estimating tumor cell diffusivity D and proliferation rate γ in the context of the mechanistic reaction-diffusion equation from single-point-in-time routine biopsies aims to deliver just that, and quantities computed from the parameter estimates have recently been tested as a new biomarkers for risk-stratification in radiotherapy. Here, we extend the findings of this previous work by providing a first theoretical validation. The method is applied to in-silico biopsies which are generated by solving the two-dimensional reaction-diffusion equation for different growth terms (exponential and logistic) with a Dirac-Delta initial condition, and transforming the continuous results into spatial point patterns via a form of reverse coarse-graining. If no information about tumor age is used, in short-term experiments the original dispersion length sqrt D/γ could be retrieved with a relative root mean squared error (RRMSE) of around 8% and an R squared-value of 0.97. In long-term experiments, the RRMSEs ranged from 8 to 14% and the R squared-values from 0.75 to 0.98. The scaled front velocity sqrt D timesγ, which can only be estimated if information about tumor age is available, was retrieved with an RRMSE of 7% and an R squared of 0.98 in both, the short-term and the long-term experiments.