Radiation Oncology/Physical Oncology
Appearance
- Physical oncology (PO) is defined as the study of the role of mechanical signals in a cancerous tumor
- The mechanical signals can be forces, pressures ("pull", "push" and "shear" designating the forces / pressures that push, pull or are tangential)
- A cancerous tumor (or "solid tumor" in the jargon of oncologists to differentiate them from hematological malignancies) is an organ consisting of two tissues
- In the center the cancerous tumor proper and around the ExtraCellular Matrix (ECM), sometimes called stroma, chorion or connective tissue
- The cancerous tissue is derived from a normal tissue of the body: breast cancer arises from a cancerous transformation of the normal mammary glandular tissue