SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING FAIR
Research Plan and/or Abstract for 2012

Category Award:   0 (GRAND AWARD)

Research Plan:

Abstract:
Irregular shapes in nature are hard to describe using regular Euclidean geometrical forms, and as shown by Benoit Mandelbrot, are better represented by their fractal dimension [1]. Recent research results show that cancer cells have a higher fractal dimension, or irregularity, than benign cells [2,3]. One technique of determining fractal dimension is the box-count method, in which boxes of a specific size are overlaid on an image and then the number of boxes with pieces of the image in them are counted [4,5]. The process is repeated with boxes of smaller sizes, and the ratio of boxes used to boxes counted is then graphed to determine the fractal dimension. In this project, the box-count method of fractal dimension analysis is used on images of specific cells/cell clusters (histological data) in order to establish the difference in fractal dimensions between malignant and benign tissues. The goal is to demonstrate (with a large data set) that there is a clear and quantifiable difference between the fractal dimensions of the two types of tissues; this method can then be used as a potential mathematical method to detect and diagnose cancer at an early stage. The images used in this project are actual pictures of cancerous and noncancerous cells that were obtained from open source databases managed by research institutions. These databases have been made available to the public to be used in research [6,7,8].