Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SB1-P028
DIFFERENTIATION IN GEOMETRICAL PROPERTIES OF
BIOPHYSICAL MODELS OF PERICELLULAR BRUSHES FOUND ON
THE SURFACE OF CANCEROUS AND NORMAL CERVICAL
EPITHELIAL CELLS
Juan de Dios Hernández Velázquez 1
1
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Centro de Investigación en Ciencia Físico-
Matemáticas, Mexico.
Differences in geometrical properties have been found on the topographies of
pericellular brushes models representing cancerous and healthy cell surfaces.
Using dissipative particle dynamics method, we study the influence of the brush
composition, chain stiffness and solvent quality on the fractal dimension of the
images. In addition to the fractal dimension calculation, lacunarity was obtained
also, which is a measure of the distribution of gaps in the image. Soft,
monodisperse brushes are found to have smaller fractal dimension than soft
polydisperse ones, under poor solvent conditions, in agreement with recent
experiments on freeze-dried cancerous and healthy human cervical epithelial
cells. The topographies of the brushes on healthy model cells are found to be
more textured than their cancerous counterparts, as indicated by the smaller
lacunarity of the latter. These results may explain why cancerous cells appear to
be simply fractal while healthy ones are multifractal. Additionally, we show how
the image resolution becomes critical for the accurate assessment of differences
between images different cells.
Keywords: Cancer, Fractal dimension, Lacunarity
Presenting authors email: juanddiosh@gmail.com