Author(s)

Sena Apeke^1,2, Laurent Gaubert^1,3, Nicolas Boussion^1,4, Dimitris Visvikis^1,4, Olivier Saut⁵, Thierry Colin⁵, Philippe Lambin⁶, Vincent Rodin², Pascal Redou^1,3

¹LaTIM, Unité Mixte de Recherche 1101, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Brest, France.
²Immersive Natural User Interaction Team, Lab-STICC, Unité Mixte de Recherche CNRS 6285, Computer Science Department, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France.
³Centre Européen de Réalité Virtuelle, Brest, France.
⁴Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire de Brest, Brest, France.
⁵Institut de Mathématiques de Bordeaux, Talence, France.
⁶The D-Lab & M-Lab, Department of Precision Medicine, GROW—School of Oncology and Developmental Biology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.

A hybrid model is proposed in this study to predict rectal tumour response during radiotherapy treatment. As the oxygen partial pressure distribution (pO₂) is a data which is naturally represented at the microscopic scale, we firstly estimate the optimal pO₂ distribution using both a diffusion equation and a discrete multi-scale model (that we proposed in a previous study). The aim is to use the effectiveness in algorithmic complexity of the discrete model and its multi-scale aspect in this work to estimate biological information at cellular scale and then construct them at macroscopic scale. Secondly, the obtained pO₂ distribution results are used as an input of a biomechanical model in order to simulate tumour volume evolution during radiotherapy. FDG PET images of 21 rectal cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy are used to simulate the tumour evolution during the treatment. The simulated results using the proposed hybride model, allow the interpretation of tumour aggressiveness.

Tumour, Treatment, Response, Discrete, Density, FDG PET, SUV, PDE, Simulation

Apeke, S. , Gaubert, L. , Boussion, N. , Visvikis, D. , Saut, O. , Colin, T. , Lambin, P. , Rodin, V. and Redou, P. (2022) An Hybrid Model for Rectal Tumour Response Prediction during Radiotherapy. Open Journal of Biophysics, 12, 245-264. doi: 10.4236/ojbiphy.2022.124012.