Novel microelectromechanical fiber glass system to quantify contractile characteristics of isolated cardiac muscle cells

Cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all organisms: the smallest structure capable of performing all the activities vital to life. One goal of current research interests is to learn how the muscle varies the strength of its contraction in response to electric stimuli. A wide variety of techniques have been developed to monitor the mechanical response of isolated cardiac myocytes. Some success has been reported with the use of intact rat myocytes supported by suction micropipettes and in guinea pig myocytes adhering to glass beams.; However, the usual measuring techniques proposed in the literature exhibit destructive contact performance on live cells. They could not solve the problem, since the cell may die during or after the time-consuming attachment process at the beginning of each experiment.; In contrast, a novel non-contact method developed at the Electro-Optics Lab of Electrical Engineering Department relies on a laser and a high speed imaging systems to illuminate and capture the contractile response of a muscle cell, which is removed via a biopsy (living body) and in soft contact with a gel-like fluid (nourish solution). This optical technology then portrays, in real time, the cell's movement on a microcomputer. Computer-controlled digital image acquisition systems enables sequences of cell images to be analyzed using computer-based image processing techniques. The system is tested by creating a synthetic muscle cell--a delicate fiber glass tube with an inner diameter which is the same size of a real cardiac cell. By comparing the dynamics of the real cell with that of the simulated cell, the contractile force of the real cell can be measured. We hope that this new test will help us better understand why patients with heart disease develop different types of heart failure and offer insight on how to avoid that development or on how to treat the ailment.