Spatiotemporal quantification of acoustic cell patterning using Voronoï tessellation

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Biophysics
• Cell Biology

Background:

• Acoustic patterning with ultrasound standing waves enables remote generation of ordered cell systems.
• Applications include guiding organoid development and complex tissue organization.
• Disruptive factors can prevent uniform cell array formation, necessitating quality assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a comprehensive assessment of acoustically-patterned cell population quality.
• To establish metrics for evaluating the impact of various parameters on acoustic patterning.
• To characterize spatiotemporal processes in acoustic patterning and cell migration.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Voronoï tessellation, a mathematical approach, to generate quality metrics.
• Assessed the effects of cell concentration, pressure amplitude, ultrasound frequency, and biomaterial viscosity.
• Extended the approach to characterize cell suspensions and patterned cell cluster migration.

Main Results:

• Developed a series of metrics to quantitatively measure acoustic patterning quality.
• Demonstrated the method's ability to assess the influence of key experimental parameters.
• Extended the methodology for characterizing dynamic processes like cell migration.

Conclusions:

• Voronoï tessellation provides a simple, unbiased, and informative framework for acoustic patterning.
• The described methods offer systematic quality control, parameter exploration, and tracking of tissue formation.
• This approach will advance the reliability and understanding of ultrasound-based cell organization technologies.