Biological network growth in complex environments: A computational framework
Fig 4
Starting conditions are provided as image volumes and as list of initial positions and directions. During each time step, the steps in the grey box are performed in parallel for each cone. The four elementary event types during network growth occur with their respective probabilities (A), depending on the local environment. Afterwards, the next position of each cone is determined from the spherical probability distribution computed from the local environment (B). Finally, the computation grid (left) and network dictionary (right), which are kept in shared memory, are updated by each parallel process, such that they can provide up-to-date conditions for all cones in the subsequent step. Finally, the network graph is constructed, its topological properties computed, and the network is visualized. These analysis steps can also be performed periodically during the simulation to monitor network development on-the-fly.