TFMLAB: A MATLAB toolbox for 4D traction force microscopy
Jorge Barrasa-Fano,
Apeksha Shapeti,
Álvaro Jorge-Peñas,
Mojtaba Barzegari,
José Antonio Sanz-Herrera,
Hans Van Oosterwyck
Affiliations
Jorge Barrasa-Fano
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Biomechanics section, KU Leuven, Belgium
Apeksha Shapeti
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Biomechanics section, KU Leuven, Belgium
Álvaro Jorge-Peñas
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Biomechanics section, KU Leuven, Belgium
Mojtaba Barzegari
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Biomechanics section, KU Leuven, Belgium
José Antonio Sanz-Herrera
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain
Hans Van Oosterwyck
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Biomechanics section, KU Leuven, Belgium; Prometheus, Division of Skeletal Tissue Engineering, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; Corresponding author at: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Biomechanics section, KU Leuven, Belgium.
We present TFMLAB, a MATLAB software package for 4D (x;y;z;t) Traction Force Microscopy (TFM). While various TFM computational workflows are available in the literature, open-source programs that are easy to use by researchers with limited technical experience and that can analyze 4D in vitro systems do not exist. TFMLAB integrates all the computational steps to compute active cellular forces from confocal microscopy images, including image processing, cell segmentation, image alignment, matrix displacement measurement and force recovery. Moreover, TFMLAB eases usability by means of interactive graphical user interfaces. This work describes the package’s functionalities and analyzes its performance on a real TFM case.
