Chaste: Cancer, Heart and Soft Tissue Environment

Area of Science:

• Computational Biology
• Physiological Modeling
• Scientific Software Engineering

Background:

• Physiological and biological systems require sophisticated computational models for understanding complex processes.
• Existing simulation tools often lack the flexibility, verification, or accessibility needed for diverse research applications.
• The Cancer, Heart And Soft Tissue Environment (Chaste) project emerged to address these limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present Chaste as a versatile, open-source simulation package for physiological and biological modeling.
• To highlight the modular design and specific application modules (Cardiac Chaste, Cell-based Chaste, Lung Chaste).
• To emphasize the software engineering principles ensuring code quality, reusability, and reliability for the scientific community.

Main Methods:

• Development of a modular and extensible software architecture.
• Implementation of specialized libraries for continuum mechanics, cardiac electrophysiology, and cell-based tissue simulations.
• Integration of common scientific computing infrastructure, including linear algebra, mesh handling, and differential equation solvers.
• Rigorous testing and verification processes for all developed modules.

Main Results:

• Chaste provides high-performance, verified simulation frameworks for cardiac electrophysiology (Cardiac Chaste).
• It offers efficient and extensible tools for cell-based modeling of biological tissues (Cell-based Chaste), supporting various modeling approaches.
• A novel, efficient, and verified package for lung ventilation modeling (Lung Chaste) is available, coupling airway mechanics with organ-scale ventilation.

Conclusions:

• Chaste is a robust, open-source simulation package supporting diverse physiological and biological research areas.
• Its modular design and rigorous engineering facilitate code quality, reusability, and reliability.
• The package empowers researchers in cardiac and respiratory physiology, cancer, and developmental biology with advanced computational tools.