Musical tuning enhanced in-vitro micro/nano palpation for multi-scale biological entities

Abstract

This paper presents our recent research efforts on creating a musical tuning enhanced in-vitro micro/nano palpation system that will help to intuitively and interactively identify (by hearing) the mechanical signature or bio-marker of multi-scale biological entities, including cells, embryos, tissues, and organs. This work takes the concept of acoustic stethoscope and applies it to intuitively understand clues between micro or nano mechanical properties change and pathology of biological entities through humans' multi-modal perception capabilities. During implementation, a developed highly sensitive micro-force sensor serves as “acoustic stethoscope” that be able to access the surface of biological entity and measures its mechanical properties and changes. These measurements are then converted into 88-key piano musical voices for hearing and identification in real time. Preliminary experimental results demonstrate the performance of the developed micro-force sensor and the musical tuning methodology, as well successful in-vitro micro palpation on the fruit vesicles. Our research is a major step towards a multi-modal, intuitive, and interactive system engineering approach for biomedical studies such as cellular pathology, tissue engineering, plant and animal physiology.