Analysis of Different Computational Techniques for Calculating the Polarizability Tensors of Stem Cells with Realistic Three-Dimensional Morphologies.

Abstract

Recently, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has developed a database of three-dimensional (3D) stem cell morphologies grown in ten different scaffolds to study the effect of the cells' environments on their morphologies. The goal of this work is to study the polarizability tensors of these stem cell morphologies, using three independent computational techniques, to quantify the effect of the environment on the electric properties of these cells. We show excellent agreement between the three techniques, validating the accuracy of our calculations. These computational methods allowed us to investigate different meshing resolutions for each stem cell morphology. After validating our results, we use a fast and accurate Pad' approximation formulation to calculate the polarizability tensors of stem cells for any contrast value between their dielectric permittivity and the dielectric permittivity of their environment. We also performed statistical analysis of our computational results to identify which environment generates cells with similar electric properties. The computational analysis and the results reported herein can be used for shedding light on the response of stem cells to electric fields in applications such as dielectrophoresis and electroporation and for calculating the electric properties of similar biological structures with complex 3D shapes.