Constitutive parameter identifiability and the design of experiments for applications in breast biomechanics
type: CreativeWork
description: Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in females, affecting 1 in every 10 women worldwide. Breast conserving therapy (BCT) is the most common procedure used for treating early-stage invasive breast cancers, and involves localised excision of tumorous lesions followed by radiotherapy. Clinical imaging modalities used for diagnosing the disease and performing pre-operative planning (e.g. MRI) acquire information with the patient positioned differently to that assumed during the actual treatment procedures (where images of the internal configuration of the breast are unavailable). These represent some of the biggest challenges that surgeons face when treating the disease, which currently results in incomplete excision in 20 % to 40 % of BCT patients. Patient-specific biomechanical models of the breast have the potential to address these challenges as they allow the different loading conditions imposed on the breast during diagnostic and pre-operative imaging to be simulated. This information can be used to help register regions of interest between the medical images, while also allowing the specific location of tumours to be predicted during treatment procedures. To obtain reliable predictions of tissue movement, the models need to be personalised for the specific geometry, composition, and arrangement of an individual’s breast tissues. Robust calibration of the constitutive parameters describing the mechanical behaviour of these tissues is also required. Determining these parameters is non-trivial due to the difficulty in knowing which calibration experiments are required to obtain reliable parameter estimates. This thesis begins by describing a set of studies aimed at validating the mechanical modelling of heterogeneous layered soft bodies. Two layered arrangements were considered: two adjacent layers with similar thickness (seen, for example, in the arrangement of adipose and muscle tissue in the breast); and a thin membrane attached to a thicke…
abstract: Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in females, affecting 1 in every 10 women worldwide. Breast conserving therapy (BCT) is the most common procedure used for treating early-stage invasive breast cancers, and involves localised excision of tumorous lesions followed by radiotherapy. Clinical imaging modalities used for diagnosing the disease and performing pre-operative planning (e.g. MRI) acquire information with the patient positioned differently to that assumed during the actual treatment procedures (where images of the internal configuration of the breast are unavailable). These represent some of the biggest challenges that surgeons face when treating the disease, which currently results in incomplete excision in 20 % to 40 % of BCT patients. Patient-specific biomechanical models of the breast have the potential to address these challenges as they allow the different loading conditions imposed on the breast during diagnostic and pre-operative imaging to be simulated. This information can be used to help register regions of interest between the medical images, while also allowing the specific location of tumours to be predicted during treatment procedures. To obtain reliable predictions of tissue movement, the models need to be personalised for the specific geometry, composition, and arrangement of an individual’s breast tissues. Robust calibration of the constitutive parameters describing the mechanical behaviour of these tissues is also required. Determining these parameters is non-trivial due to the difficulty in knowing which calibration experiments are required to obtain reliable parameter estimates. This thesis begins by describing a set of studies aimed at validating the mechanical modelling of heterogeneous layered soft bodies. Two layered arrangements were considered: two adjacent layers with similar thickness (seen, for example, in the arrangement of adipose and muscle tissue in the breast); and a thin membrane attached to a thicke…
author: Babarenda Gamage, Thiranja
license: https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm
date published: 2016
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:04:15Z
provider: University of Auckland
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: ResearchSpace@Auckland

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/2292/29547