Enhancing micropipette aspiration with artificial-intelligence analysis.

Journal: Biophysical journal
Published Date:

Abstract

The micropipette-aspiration technique is commonly used in the field of mechanobiology, offering a variety of measurement types. To extract biophysical parameters from the experiments, numerical analysis is required. Although previous works have developed techniques for the partial automation of these analyses, these approaches are relatively time consuming for the researchers. In this article, we describe the development and application of an artificial-intelligence tool for the completely automatic analysis of micropipette-aspiration experiments. The use of this tool is compared with previous methods and the impressive reduction in the time required for these analyses is discussed. The new tool opens new possibilities for the micropipette-aspiration technique by enabling dealing with large numbers of experiments and real-time measurements.

Authors

  • Aldo Abarca-Ortega
    Departamento de Ingeniería Mecánica, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, USACH, Santiago de Chile, Chile; Departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, ETSI de Caminos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; Centro de Tecnología Biomédica, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Pozuelo de Alracón, Spain. Electronic address: aldo.abarca@ctb.upm.es.
  • Blanca González-Bermúdez
    Departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, ETSI de Caminos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; Centro de Tecnología Biomédica, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Pozuelo de Alracón, Spain; Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Hospital Clínico San Carlos, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain.
  • Gustavo R Plaza
    Departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, ETSI de Caminos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; Centro de Tecnología Biomédica, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Pozuelo de Alracón, Spain; Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Hospital Clínico San Carlos, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: gustavo.plaza@upm.es.