Modeling growth in biological materials (Q2879875)

The authors review the theories that have been used to model the growth in biological materials. They categorize the theories according to whether the tissue is considered as continuum object or a collections of cells. From the continuum point of view, the paper discusses the deformation gradient decomposition method. From the discrete point of view, the paper presents the cellular automata, center-dynamics and vertex dynamics models. The authors conclude by assessing these two fundamentally different approaches to tissue growth, and by identifying possible avenues for further research.