Assessment of Stress and Strain on Women's Breast Tissue Caused by Single Round Malignant Tumor

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancer and the leading cause of death among women. In the past, the simulation approach has been used to study, analyze and improve breast cancer early detection. Although there have been simulation work related to identifying breast tumors, most of these simulation work required an image from a breast imaging modality such as the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for image segmenting purposes. Minimal simulation work was done to assess the stress and strain of a women's breast tissue caused by the presence of a tumor without the use of an image obtained from a breast imaging modality. In this study, three main layers of the breast which are the glandular, fat tissue and skin are used as the underlying breast tissue material with the malignant tumor. The women's breast geometry design was executed with Salome software where the elasticity simulation based on Youngs Modulus was executed with the Elmer Finite Element Analysis Method (FEAM) software. The analysis was based on the effects of stress and strain of women's breast tissue for each of the glandular, fat tissue and skin with an increase of force from 1 N to 5 N exhibited by the malignant tumor. Results from the simulation have confirmed that the existence of the round malignant tumor within the breast tissue causes the stress and strain on the breast's tissue. The results have demonstrated that glandular tissue which has the highest material density experiences more stress and strain as the malignant tumor force increases with the highest stress and strained obtained at 3.30 Pa and strain at 2.11 x 10(-7) respectively. The findings of this study have given a clear outcome regarding the relationship of stress and strain of breast material layers caused by a round malignant tumor within a breast.