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

Abstract

The understanding of cell manipulation, for example in microinjection, requires an accurate model of the cells. Motivated by this important requirement, a 3D particlebased mechanical model is derived for simulating the deformation of the fish egg membrane and the corresponding cellular forces during microrobotic cell injection. The model is formulated based on the kinematic and dynamic of springdamper 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 zebrafish 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.

Effect of Injection Speed on Oocyte Deformation in ICSI

“…Various force sensing techniques were proposed by researchers to improve cell survivability rates in the microinjection process [10,11]. Cellular force measurement is also essential for evaluating the stiffness of the biological cell membrane, which exhibits viscoelastic behaviour during the injection process, and a 3D mathematical model can be derived [12,13]. Therefore, having force feedback is a prior concern in micro injection tasks so that the operator can achieve better control over the micro injection and manipulation processes [14,15,16].…”