Bone Remodelling: A Complex Automata-Based Model Running in BioShape

Bone remodelling, as many biological phenomena, is inherently multi-scale, i.e. it is characterised by interactions involving different scales at the same time. At this aim, we exploit the Complex Automata paradigm and the BioShape 3D spatial simulator respectively (i) for describing the bone remodelling process in terms of a 2-scale aggregation of uniform Cellular Automata coupled by a well-established composition pattern, and (ii) for executing them in a uniform and integrated way in terms of shapes equipped with perception and movement capabilities. On the one hand, the proposed model confirms the high expressiveness degree of Complex Automata to describe multi-scale phenomena. On the other hand, the possibility of executing such a model in BIOSHAPE highlights the existence of a general mapping - from Complex Automata into the BIOSHAPE native modelling paradigm - also enforced by the fact that both approaches result to be suitable for handling different scales in a uniform way, for including spatial information and for bypassing inter-scale homogenization problems.