Mixtures of Neural Cellular Automata: A Stochastic Framework for Growth Modelling and Self-Organization

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Autori principali: Milite, Salvatore, Caravagna, Giulio, Sottoriva, Andrea
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Milite, Salvatore
Caravagna, Giulio
Sottoriva, Andrea
author_facet Milite, Salvatore
Caravagna, Giulio
Sottoriva, Andrea
contents Neural Cellular Automata (NCAs) are a promising new approach to model self-organizing processes, with potential applications in life science. However, their deterministic nature limits their ability to capture the stochasticity of real-world biological and physical systems. We propose the Mixture of Neural Cellular Automata (MNCA), a novel framework incorporating the idea of mixture models into the NCA paradigm. By combining probabilistic rule assignments with intrinsic noise, MNCAs can model diverse local behaviors and reproduce the stochastic dynamics observed in biological processes. We evaluate the effectiveness of MNCAs in three key domains: (1) synthetic simulations of tissue growth and differentiation, (2) image morphogenesis robustness, and (3) microscopy image segmentation. Results show that MNCAs achieve superior robustness to perturbations, better recapitulate real biological growth patterns, and provide interpretable rule segmentation. These findings position MNCAs as a promising tool for modeling stochastic dynamical systems and studying self-growth processes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_20486
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mixtures of Neural Cellular Automata: A Stochastic Framework for Growth Modelling and Self-Organization
Milite, Salvatore
Caravagna, Giulio
Sottoriva, Andrea
Artificial Intelligence
Neural Cellular Automata (NCAs) are a promising new approach to model self-organizing processes, with potential applications in life science. However, their deterministic nature limits their ability to capture the stochasticity of real-world biological and physical systems. We propose the Mixture of Neural Cellular Automata (MNCA), a novel framework incorporating the idea of mixture models into the NCA paradigm. By combining probabilistic rule assignments with intrinsic noise, MNCAs can model diverse local behaviors and reproduce the stochastic dynamics observed in biological processes. We evaluate the effectiveness of MNCAs in three key domains: (1) synthetic simulations of tissue growth and differentiation, (2) image morphogenesis robustness, and (3) microscopy image segmentation. Results show that MNCAs achieve superior robustness to perturbations, better recapitulate real biological growth patterns, and provide interpretable rule segmentation. These findings position MNCAs as a promising tool for modeling stochastic dynamical systems and studying self-growth processes.
title Mixtures of Neural Cellular Automata: A Stochastic Framework for Growth Modelling and Self-Organization
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20486