A novel method to calculate the mechanical properties of cancer cells based on atomic force microscopy

Purpose: Mechanical properties, as the inherent characteristics of cells, play a critical role in many essential physiological processes, including cell differentiation, migration, and growth. The mechanical properties of cells are one of the criteria that help to determine whether the tissue contains lesions at the single cell level, and it is very important for the early prevention and accurate diagnosis of diseases. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) makes it possible to measure the mechanical properties at single cell level in physiological state. This paper presents a novel method to calculate the mechanical properties of cancer cells more accurately through Atomic force microscopy. Methods: A new induced equation of Hertz’s model, called differential Hertz’s model, has been proposed to calculate the mechanical properties of cancer cells. Moreover, the substrate effect has also been effectively reduced through comparing the calculated mechanical properties of cell at different cell surface areas. Results: The results indicate that the method utilized to calculate the mechanical properties of cells can effectively eliminate the errors in calculation, caused by the thermal drift of AFM system and the substrate effect, and thus improve the calculation accuracy. Conclusion: The mechanical properties calculated by our method in this study are closer to the actual value. Thus, this method shows potential for use in establishing a standard library of Young’s modulus.