Biomechanics and Structure-property Relationship in Solid Tumour

这是机械工程专业的博士研究项目。生物组织往往具有独特的三维分层微观结构和微观形态，并在其发育和病理生理阶段不断演变。对于实体肿瘤，例如前列腺癌、乳腺癌、皮肤癌和结直肠癌，了解其组织微观结构的演变是其临床诊断的关键。此外，由于固体和流体的力学行为高度依赖于组织的微观结构，因此通过定量了解其结构-性质关系，可以将癌组织的力学性质用于诊断目的。该博士项目将采用医学成像和处理技术，3D CAD，有限元方法和其他先进的数学和数值方法，如均质化方法（以渐近或数值形式），以量化各种类型实体瘤的结构-性质关系。该项目将受益于由Yuhang Chen博士领导的组织力学小组在癌症力学领域现有和正在进行的工作中的数据，这些工作涉及前列腺/结直肠组织的各种形式的力学特征。虽然这个项目的主要目标是开发新的计算方法，它也预计，某些实验数据（如软组织的机械特性）可能需要验证所提出的建模方法。

This is a PhD research project in Mechanical Engineering.Biological tissue often has unique three-dimensional hierarchical microstructures and micro-morphologies, constantly evolving through their development and patho-physiological stages. For solid tumour, e.g. in forms of prostate, breast, skin and colorectal cancers, understanding the evolutions of their tissue microstructures is key to their clinical diagnosis. In addition, since the mechanical behaviours, in terms of both solid and fluid ones, highly depend on the tissue microstructures, it becomes possible to utilize the mechanical properties of the cancerous tissue for diagnosis purposes, through quantitative understanding of its structure-property relationship. This PhD project will employ medical imaging and processing techniques, 3D CAD, Finite Element Method and other advanced mathematical and numerical methods, such as homogenisation method (in its asymptotic or numerical forms), in order to quantify the structure-property relationship in various types of solid tumours. This project will benefit from data from existing and on-going work in the area of cancer mechanics in Tissue Mechanics Group, led by Dr Yuhang Chen, in various forms of mechanical characterisations of prostate/colorectal tissues. Although the main goal of this project is to develop novel computational approaches, it is also expected that certain experimental data (such as mechanical characterisation of soft tissue) may be required to validate the proposed modelling approaches.