Figure 2. The simulation configuration used for the simulations.

The growth of the primary tumour and metastases are modelled via the mathematical function x(t) (see eq. 2). The blood stream is modelled via events. The intravasation events are created conforming to the colonization rate β(x) (see eq. 3). Executing the intravasation event, a cell is added to the blood stream and a new event describing what happens next to this cell is generated. In the simulated scenarios it is examined whether metastases are able to metastasize (dotted line) and whether particularly late disseminated tumour cells are capable to form metastases.