Numerical assessment of the applicability of geometry-based force inference on homogeneous and heterogeneous cells

Abstract

The measurement of cellular forces, which reflect crucial biological attributes, has the potential to replace conventional cell assessment methods, such as morphology, proliferation, and molecular expression analysis, in medical cell diagnosis and cell culture studies. In medical cell evaluations, force inference techniques have gained prominence due to their non-invasiveness and lack of requirement for specialized equipment. Among those techniques, the method proposed by Ishihara et al., which estimates forces in densely packed cells based only on cell geometry, is a promising method. However, its applicability range of this method has not been fully established. In this study, we employed a two-dimensional vertex model to numerically assess the applicability of this method on homogeneous and heterogeneous cells. Our comparisons between the true values from numerical simulations and the estimated values from the inference method revealed a significant correlation between estimation accuracy and cell roundness in systems of homogeneous cell. Moreover, the method demonstrated efficient force estimations in heterogeneous-cell systems. These findings may be useful when the force inference method is employed to evaluate medical cells.