Residual Stress in Cancerous Soft Tissue

Cancer is currently the third leading cause of death for adults (after heart disease and car accidence). It accounts for 29% of male deaths and 25% of female deaths in 2004. So, understanding growth of cancerous tissues is of fundamental theoretical and practical interest. Up to now, many methods have been employed to model a growing tumor. In most of those, the cancerous cells are assumed as an ideal or viscous liquidwhich migrates inside the tissue. However, as it will be discussed later, according to some clinical observations, mechanical stress generated inside a tumor during the growth process is an important factor in tumor growth and the liquid assumption may not interpret these observations. But, considering a growing tumor as a solid tissue raises the problem of mass generation which can not be handled using the common conservation equations (mass, momentum and energy conservation equations). Furthermore, the relation between preexisting material and the new borne one is not clear. Here, a new method in the continuum framework is proposed to model the generated residual stress in a growing solid and after that, this model is applied on a tumor spheroid. The results of this paper show the capability of the continuum mechanics in prediction the growth of the tumor as well as the generated stress during the growth process

کلیدواژه ها:

Solid tumor ، Tumor growth ، Residual stress