Human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hPSC-CMs) hold great promise for
cardiovascular disease modeling, drug screening and personalized medicine. A crucial
requirement to establish an hPSC-CM-based disease model is the availability of a reliable
differentiation protocol and a functional assessment of phenotypic properties of CMs
in a disease context. Characterization of relative changes in contractile behavior
of CMs can provide insight not only about drug effects but into the pathogenesis of
cardiovascular diseases. Image-based optical-flow analysis, which applies a speckle
tracking algorithm to videomicroscopy of hPSC-CMs, is a noninvasive method to quantitatively
assess the dynamics of mechanical contraction of the CMs. This method offers an efficient
characterization of contractile cycles. It quantifies contraction velocity field,
beat rate, contractile strain and contraction-relaxation strain rate profile, which
are important phenotypic characteristics of CMs.
