Choice of spatial discretisation influences the progression of viral infection within multicellular tissues

Abstract

There has been an increasing recognition of the utility of models of the spatial dynamics of viral spread within tissues. Multicellular models, where cells are represented as discrete regions of space coupled to a virus density surface, are a popular approach to capture these dynamics. Conventionally, such models are simulated by discretising the viral surface and depending on the rate of viral diffusion and other considerations, a finer or coarser discretisation may be used. The impact that this choice may have on the behaviour of the system has not been studied. Here we demonstrate that under realistic parameter regimes – where viral diffusion is small enough to support the formation of fa..