Formulation and Simulation of a 3D Mechanical Model of Embryos for Microinjection

The understanding of cell manipulation, for example in microinjection, requires an accurate model of the cells. Motivated by this important requirement, a 3D particle-based mechanical model is derived for simulating the deformation of the fish egg membrane and the corresponding cellular forces during micro robotic cell injection. The model is formulated based on the kinematic and dynamic of spring-damper configuration with multi-particle joints considering the visco-elastic fluidic properties. It simulates the indentation force feedback as well as cell visual deformation during microinjection. A preliminary simulation study is conducted with different parameter configurations. The results indicate that the proposed particle-based model is able to provide similar deformation profiles as observed from a real microinjection experiment of the zebra fish embryo published in the literature. As a generic modelling approach is adopted, the proposed model also has the potential in applications with different types of manipulation such as micropipette cell aspiration.