Modeling Soft Contact Mechanism of Biological Cells Using an Atomic Force Bio-Microscope

The development of a mechanical force sensing device system based on force/vision feedback control for exploring in vitro the contact mechanics of human adherent cervix Epithelial Hela cells is presented in this paper. The design of the prototype combines scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques with advanced robotics approaches. Some important issues in the design process, such as in vitro environment constraints and calibration of the force sensing probe are also addressed in this paper. The system is then used for accurate and non-destructive mechanical characterization based on soft contact interactions on biological samples. Finally, some mechanical properties of the studied biological samples are estimated using two appropriate models describing the contact mechanism taking into account adhesion forces