Towards a non-destructive in vitro biomechanical characterization

This paper presents a fully automated micro-robotic system based on force/vision referenced control designed for cell mechanical characterization. The design of the prototype combines Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) techniques with advanced robotics approaches. As a result, accurate and non-destructive mechanical characterization based on soft contact interactions mechanics are achieved. The in vitro working conditions are supported by the experimental setup so that mechanical characterizations can be performed in biological environmental requirements as well as in cyclical operating mode during several hours. The design and calibration of the different modules which compose the experimental setup are detailed. Experimentation on the mechanical cell characterization under in vitro conditions on human adherent cervix Epithelial Hela cells are presented to demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of the proposed setup