Title: Development of spatiotemporal validation methods of an agent-based model of epithelial cells: analysis of a colony of keratinocytes

Authors: Cesar Pichardo-Almarza, Rod Smallwood, S.A. Billings

Addresses: Unilever Research and Development, Colworth Park, Sharnbrook, MK44 1LQ, UK. ' Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 4DP, UK. ' Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 4DP, UK

Abstract: In this paper an Agent-Based Model (ABM) to study Normal Human Keratinocytes (NHK) (tissue cells) is investigated. ABM are widely used for the simulation of systems from several domains (biology, economics, meteorology, etc.). In biology, ABM are useful for predicting the social behaviour of systems; in particular, they seem well adapted to model the behaviour of a cell population. These models exhibit probabilistic behaviour and the validation of simulation results is often a qualitative analysis by experts (biologists). The aim of this paper is to propose new variables and metrics for the development of quantitative methods to validate the model.

Keywords: spatiotemporal analysis; epithelial cells; normal human keratinocytes; NHK; ABM; tissue cells; agent-based models; Monte Carlo simulation; modelling; agent-based systems; multi-agent systems; MAS; social behaviour; spatiotemporal validation; biological rules; self-organisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJFIPM.2008.022151

International Journal of Functional Informatics and Personalised Medicine, 2008 Vol.1 No.4, pp.335 - 354

Published online: 21 Dec 2008 *