"Fractals in Biology and Medicine" explores the potential of fractal geometry for describing and understanding biological organisms, their development and growth as well as their structural design and functional properties. It extends these notions to assess changes associated with disease in the hope to contribute to the understanding of pathogenetic processes in medicine. The book is the first comprehensive presentation of the importance of the new concept of fractal geometry for biological and medical sciences. It collates in a logical sequence extended papers based on invited lectures and free communications presented at a symposium in Ascona, Switzerland, attended by leading scientists in this field, among them the originator of fractal geometry, Benoit Mandelbrot. "Fractals in Biology and Medicine" begins by asking how the theoretical construct of fractal geometry can be applied to biomedical sciences and then addresses the role of fractals in the design and morphogenesis of biological organisms as well as in molecular and cell biology. The consideration of fractal structure in understanding metabolic functions and pathological changes is a particularly promising avenue for future research.

Inhalt

Preface: Summary of the Symposium.- The Significance of Fractals for Biology and Medicine. An Introduction and Summary.- Fractal Geometry and Biomedical Sciences7.- A Fractal's Lacunarity, and how it can be Tuned and Measured.- Spatial and Temporal Fractal Patterns in Cell and Molecular Biology.- Chaos, Noise and Biological Data.- Fractal Landscapes in Physiology & Medicine: Long-Range Correlations in DNA Sequences and Heart Rate Intervals.- Fractals in Biological Design and Morphogenesis.- Design of Biological Organisms and Fractal Geometry.- Fractal and Non-Fractal Growth of Biological Cell Systems.- Evolutionary Meaning, Functions and Morphogenesis of Branching Structures in Biology.- Relationship Between the Branching Pattern of Airways and the Spatial Arrangement of Pulmonary Acini - A Re-Examination from a Fractal Point of View.- Multivariate Characterization of Blood Vessel Morphogenesis in the Avian Chorioallantoic Membrane (CAM): Cell Proliferation, Length Density and Fractal Dimension.- Phyllotaxis or Self-Similarity in Plant Morphogenesis.- Fractals in Molecular and Cell Biology.- Evolutionary Interplay Between Spontaneous Mutation and Selection: Aleatoric Contributions of Molecular Reaction Mechanisms.- Error Propagation Theory of Chemically Solid Phase Synthesized Oligonucleotides and DNA Sequences for Biomedical Application.- Fractional Relaxation Equations for Protein Dynamics.- Measuring Fractal Dimensions of Cell Contours: Practical Approaches and their Limitations.- Fractal Properties of Pericellular Membrane from Lymphocytes and Leukemic Cells.- Cellular Sociology: Parametrization of Spatial Relationships Based on Voronoi Diagram and Ulam Trees.- A Fractal Analysis of Morphological Differentiation of Spinal Cord Neurons in Cell Culture.- Fractal Dimensions and Dendritic Branching of Neurons in the Somatosensory Thalamus.- Fractal Structure and Metabolic Functions.- Organisms as Open Systems.- Transfer to and across Irregular Membranes Modelled by Fractal Geometry.- Scaling and Active Surface of Fractal Membranes.- Structure Formation in Excitable Media.- Colony Morphology of the Fungus Aspergillus Oryzae.- Estimation of the Correlation Dimension of All-Night Sleep EEG Data with a Personal Super Computer.- Fractals in Pathology.- Changes in Fractal Dimension of Trabecular Bone in Osteoporosis: A Preliminary Study.- Use of the Fractal Dimension to Characterize the Structure of Cancellous Bone in Radiographs of the Proximal Femur.- Distribution of Local-Connected Fractal Dimension and the Degree of Liver Fattiness from Ultrasound.- Fractal Dimension as a Characterisation Parameter of Premalignant and Malignant Epithelial Lesions of the Floor of the Mouth.- Modelling.- Modelling HIV/AIDS Dynamics.- Morphological Diagnosis Turns from Gestalt to Geometry.- Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching Studied by Total Internal Reflection Microscopy: An Experimental System for Studies on Living Cells in Culture.- Anomalous Diffusion and Angle-Dependency in the Theory of Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching.- List of Speakers.- List of Participants.