Free Form Deformation–Based Image Registration Improves Accuracy of Traction Force Microscopy

Alvaro Jorge-Peñas, Alicia Izquierdo-Alvarez, Rocio Aguilar-Cuenca, Miguel Vicente-Manzanares, José Manuel Garcia-Aznar, Hans Van Oosterwyck, Elena M de-Juan-Pardo, Carlos Ortiz- de-Solorzano and Arrate Muñoz-Barrutia

PLOS ONE, 2015, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-22

Abstract: Traction Force Microscopy (TFM) is a widespread method used to recover cellular tractions from the deformation that they cause in their surrounding substrate. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is commonly used to quantify the substrate’s deformations, due to its simplicity and efficiency. However, PIV relies on a block-matching scheme that easily underestimates the deformations. This is especially relevant in the case of large, locally non-uniform deformations as those usually found in the vicinity of a cell’s adhesions to the substrate. To overcome these limitations, we formulate the calculation of the deformation of the substrate in TFM as a non-rigid image registration process that warps the image of the unstressed material to match the image of the stressed one. In particular, we propose to use a B-spline -based Free Form Deformation (FFD) algorithm that uses a connected deformable mesh to model a wide range of flexible deformations caused by cellular tractions. Our FFD approach is validated in 3D fields using synthetic (simulated) data as well as with experimental data obtained using isolated endothelial cells lying on a deformable, polyacrylamide substrate. Our results show that FFD outperforms PIV providing a deformation field that allows a better recovery of the magnitude and orientation of tractions. Together, these results demonstrate the added value of the FFD algorithm for improving the accuracy of traction recovery.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144184 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 44184&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0144184

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0144184

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().