Contractile force measurements of cardiac myocytes using a micro-manipulation system

In order to develop a cell based robot, we present a micro-mechanical force measurement system for the biological muscle actuators, which utilize glucose as a power source. The proposed measurement system is composed of a micro-manipulator, a force transducer with a glass probe, a signal processor, an inverted microscope and video recording system. Using this measurement system, the contractile force and frequency of the cardiac myocytes were measured in real time and the magnitudes of the contractile force of each cardiac myocyte under different conditions were compared. From the quantitative experimental results, we could estimate that the force of cardiac myocytes is about 20–40 μN, and show that there are differences between the control cells and the micro-patterned cells.