Kalman inversion stress microscopy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Kalman filtering-based method to estimate tissue mechanical stress fields from traction force microscopy data, enabling better understanding of tissue rheology during morphogenesis.

Contribution

The study develops and validates a novel Kalman inversion stress microscopy technique for analyzing tissue stress from traction force data.

Findings

Stress field can be estimated accurately using Kalman filtering.

Epithelial monolayers exhibit rheology similar to elastic active materials.

Method validated with numerical data and applied to experimental data.

Abstract

Although mechanical cues are crucial to tissue morphogenesis and development, the tissue mechanical stress field remains poorly characterized. Given traction force timelapse movies, as obtained by traction force microscopy of in vitro cellular sheets, we show that the tissue stress field can be estimated by Kalman filtering. After validation using numerical data, we apply Kalman inversion stress microscopy to experimental data. We combine the inferred stress field with velocity and cell shape measurements to quantify the rheology of epithelial cell monolayers in physiological conditions, found to be close to that of an elastic and active material.