Identification of Viscoelastic Constitutive Parameters of a Cell Based on Fluid-Structure Coupled Finite Element Model and Experiment

Abstract

Although mechanical properties of a single cell as well as its mechanical response to stimulation are significant for mechanotransduction, it is difficult to quantitatively identify the viscoelasticity of a cell. This study proposes a methodology to determine the viscoelastic parameters for a single cell combining flow chamber experiment and fluid-structure coupled finite element model. The observation from the experiment is used to compare with the deformation response of the cell with different parameters in the finite element model with standard linear solid constitute model, which are adjusted until the two displacement response curves from the experiment and the simulation accord with each other, and then the corresponding combination of the viscoelastic parameters is determined to represent the viscoelasticity of the cell. The proposed methodology is applied on osteocytes in this study but can be generalized to other cells. The results indicate that both k1 and k2 of an osteocyte are in the order of several hundred Pa and η is in the order of kPa·s.