Noninvasive tomography of tumor progression via dynamical changes of T-cells in surrounding microenvironment
- 1Department of Mathematics, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
Abstract
Tumor progression is shaped by a continuous competition between malignant expansion and immune access within the surrounding microenvironment. Although spatial assays can reveal where T cells accumulate, most current approaches remain descriptive, treating immune organization as a static pattern and failing to infer the latent resistance structure that governs progression. Here we show that changes in peri-tumoral T-cell distribution can support noninvasive tomography of tumor progression. Using spatially resolved human breast tumor sections and controlled numerical experiments, we formulate immune-tumor interaction within a mean-field game framework in which T cells act as agents responding to a heterogeneous microenvironment while the tumor shapes an equivalent barrier field that restricts infiltration. This framework converts boundary enrichment, layered blocking and core penetration patterns into a constrained inference problem whose solution yields quantitative maps of immune exclusion, barrier strength and progression-associated internal states. Forward simulations show that barrier geometry reshapes immune-density equilibria, and inference experiments show that closely related barrier fields can be recovered from immune-density observations under controlled and tissue-shaped proxy settings. By linking observable T-cell redistribution to latent microenvironmental resistance, this approach establishes a route toward noninvasive, repeatable assessment of tumor progression without direct biopsy of the underlying barrier structure.
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BibTeX
@misc{xu2026noninvasive,
title = {{Noninvasive tomography of tumor progression via dynamical changes of T-cells in surrounding microenvironment}},
author = {L. Xu and P. Meng and W. Yin and H. Liu},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.19.752909},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.19.752909v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Noninvasive tomography of tumor progression via dynamical changes of T-cells in surrounding microenvironment
AU - L. Xu
AU - P. Meng
AU - W. Yin
AU - H. Liu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/19
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.19.752909
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.19.752909v1
AB - Tumor progression is shaped by a continuous competition between malignant expansion and immune access within the surrounding microenvironment. Although spatial assays can reveal where T cells accumulate, most current approaches remain descriptive, treating immune organization as a static pattern and failing to infer the latent resistance structure that governs progression. Here we show that changes in peri-tumoral T-cell distribution can support noninvasive tomography of tumor progression. Using spatially resolved human breast tumor sections and controlled numerical experiments, we formulate immune-tumor interaction within a mean-field game framework in which T cells act as agents responding to a heterogeneous microenvironment while the tumor shapes an equivalent barrier field that restricts infiltration. This framework converts boundary enrichment, layered blocking and core penetration patterns into a constrained inference problem whose solution yields quantitative maps of immune exclusion, barrier strength and progression-associated internal states. Forward simulations show that barrier geometry reshapes immune-density equilibria, and inference experiments show that closely related barrier fields can be recovered from immune-density observations under controlled and tissue-shaped proxy settings. By linking observable T-cell redistribution to latent microenvironmental resistance, this approach establishes a route toward noninvasive, repeatable assessment of tumor progression without direct biopsy of the underlying barrier structure.
ER -