Vision based cell strain modeling and control system

Mechanical force and geometric deformation that are applied on the cell will be transduced into biomedical signals which has been known as mechanotransduction. In turn, we expect that a particular cell function could be realized by giving a specific physical stimulus to the cell. In this work, a novel cell membrane strain model for circular cell membrane under indentation is developed. Based on this model, the deformation of the cell membrane is comprehensively measured. A cell strain modeling and control system is proposed to identify the deformability of the cell membrane and control the membrane to deform into the desired profile. The system employs the visual servoing to realize the feedback control on the cell membrane. An automatic cell boundary detection scheme is utilized to effectively optimize the visual module. With the developed control scheme, cells can be stressed into prescribed deformation without the knowledge of cells mechanical properties which enables the biologist to focus on the physical change of the cell and stimulate a desired activity in the cell by implementing the proposed system.