GFtbox is a MATLAB program for simulating the biological growth of curved surfaces such as leaves and petals, and bulk tissues, and diffusion and interaction of substances over such tissues.
GFtbox requires an installation of MATLAB. It should run on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. As I always use the latest version of Matlab, I recommend that users do the same, as I cannot guarantee that I have not depended on some Matlab feature not present in previous versions. I believe that all Matlab licences allow free upgrading to the current version.
After downloading or cloning the repository, you will have a directory called "GrowthToolbox". You can place this anywhere you want. Open MATLAB and cd to this directory. The command "GFtbox" should then open the program's GUI. It also adds the GFtbox source code directories to your MATLAB search path. If you give the Matlab command "savepath", then on subsequent runs of Matlab the "GFtbox" command will start GFtbox without you having to first cd to its directory.
Further information and documentation (a work more in stasis than in progress) is available at https://labguide.rico-coen.jic.ac.uk/index.php/Growth\_Toolbox and http://cmpdartsvr3.cmp.uea.ac.uk/wiki/BanghamLab/index.php/Software#Quantitative\_understanding\_of\_growing\_shapes:\_GFtbox All of the documentation is years out of date. This is unlikely to change.
More informative may be two published papers on GFTbox, the first dealing with leaf-like curved surfaces, the second with bulk tissues.
"Generation of Diverse Biological Forms through Combinatorial Interactions between Tissue Polarity and Growth", by Richard Kennaway et al., PLoS Comput Biol 7(6): e1002071. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002071
"Volumetric finite-element modelling of biological growth", by Richard Kennaway and Enrico Coen. Open Biol. 9: 190057. doi:10.1098/rsob.190057
Bug reports, requests, and enquiries may be made to me, Richard Kennaway, at kennawar@nbi.ac.uk or richard@kennaway.org.uk.