Recent Progress in Cellular Traction Force Microscopy Inversion Methods
细胞牵引力显微镜反演方法研究进展

Physical and mechanical interaction between cell and extracellular matrix in a microenvironment involves a large number of complex signaling transduction pathways, so it plays a key role in mediating cellular behaviors and functions such as cell proliferation, differentiation, contraction, migration and apoptosis. It is very important, both physiologically and pathologically, to quantitatively characterizing single cell activities based upon cellular traction force microscopy (CTFM). The core of CTFM consists in how to retrieve cellular traction force field from the measured substrate deformation data. This paper presents first an introduction about the principle of CTFM, and then point out the pathological nature of cellular traction inversion. Accordingly, some well-developed traction force inversion algorithms are specifically introduced, including: boundary element method (DW method), traction reconstruction with point forces (TRPF method), cellular traction recovery method based on an integral Boussinesq solution, Fourier transform traction cytometry (FTTC method), and optimal filtering method in two-dimensional Fourier space.