Artistoo (Artificial Tissue Toolbox) is a framework that lets you build interactive, explorable simulation models of cells and tissues in the web browser.
About
Framework
Artistoo implements the Cellular Potts Model (CPM), a powerful framework for
simulating diverse biological processes at tissue scale. It also contains methods
for simulating the more basic Cellular Automaton (CA) class of models.
JavaScript
Artistoo is 100% JavaScript. Although JS is an
interpreted language, investments by tech companies have boosted its performance over
the years - letting us run web simulations without loss of speed. Thanks, Google! :)
Zero-install
Artistoo simulations can be shared through a simple URL, or as an HTML file
saved locally.
Code will run as long as you include the script; your recipients don't need to
install software, and you don't need a back-end server.
Explorable
Artistoo simulations run in HTML pages and can easily be made explorable.
Your users don't have to be programmers: just add HTML sliders or input fields
to let users interact with model parameters in real-time.
Getting started
Manual
Visit the manual to learn about CPMs and for tutorials on how to get started
with the framework... from scratch.
Examples
Looking at the supplied examples is a great way to learn what you can do with
the framework. Download the page, adjust the code, see what happens.
Docs
Once you are up to speed, have a look at the detailed method documentation to
discover all options and possibilities.
Customize
Do you need something that's not there? Don't worry, Artistoo can easily be
extended with your own code. See the manual for an explanation.
License and Publication
Artistoo is freely available under the terms of the MIT open-source software license. To use for a publication, please cite:
Inge M. N. Wortel and Johannes Textor (2020).
Artistoo, a library to build, share, and explore simulations of cells and tissues in the web browser.
eLife 2021;10:e61288. doi:10.7554/eLife.61288.
This publication contains more information on Artistoo performance and discusses applications of interactive simulations in education, research, and open science.