Microscopic observation of living cells during their exposure to modulated electromagnetic fields
Sandu, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mihaela A.; Morega, Mihaela; Calin, Violeta L., Moisescu, Mihaela G.; Paun, Irina A.; Mihailescu, Mona
Journal: Advanced topics in optoelectronics, microelectronics and nanotechnologies x
Year: 2020
DOI: 10.1117/12.2571092
Cell electroporation; Finite element modeling; Holographic microscopy; Phase images; Membrane effect
Electroporation-based techniques are known for their potential to temporarily increase cells membrane permeability by controlled electric fields for transfer of non-permeant molecules; these techniques evolved in many useful biomedical applications. Current research in this domain addresses both experimental and computational analysis in a complementary manner. Numerical simulations, considering realistic cell shapes and field exposure conditions can complete the experimental investigations by opening insights and providing quantitative data. Our approach here provides cell models for EP simulations, based on experimental acquisition of images in a holographic microscopy setup and digital reconstruction of phase images of living attached B16F10 murine melanoma cells. A procedure to process and import phase images in dedicated finite element software COMSOL Multiphysics is described in detail. Based on such realistically shaped computational domains, the electric field problem is successively defined and solved under time-harmonic electric excitation, uniformly applied; the frequency dependent dielectric properties are set accordingly. Induced transmembrane voltage distribution is the representative numerical output of the analysis shown here for different expo sure conditions (membrane regions under stress, dielectric properties, field frequency), aiming to evaluate their potential efficiency on electroporation.