Structural connectivity modifications in the brain of selected patients with tumour after its removal by surgery (a case study)

The brain is a complex organ that plays an important role in the control of most functions of the body, such as awareness, thoughts, sensations, movements, speech, and memory. A tumour formed in the brain can affect its ability to accurately and properly perform such functions. In this work, we use two brains with malignant tumours of different sizes before and after surgery. To identify the brain structural topology, we analyse different networks with various configurations and use diagnostic tools to match the network topologies generated by simulations with those obtained from the data. Our results show that the Newman–Watts small-world network best reproduces the topology from the patients with small and large tumours before surgery. Considering two analysed brains, our outcomes suggest that surgery can alter the brain topology from small-world to extended Barabási–Albert scale-free.