Breast cancer detection case study. (a) Initial unimodal stiffness distribution, normalized by tissue length fraction, associated with normal tissues. (b) Initial cell stiffness ki and modified resting cell length ai for each cell i = 1, 2, …, 1000, leading to a bimodal stiffness distribution. (c) Steady-state stiffness distribution obtained with the modified resting cell lengths, exhibiting a bimodal distribution associated with malignant tissues. (Online version in colour.)