Quantifying Local Strain Field and Deformation in Active Contraction of Bladder Using a Pretrained Transformer Model: A Speckle-Free Approach
This provides a non-invasive method for biomechanical analysis of bladder micturition, applicable to other biological and engineered systems, though it is incremental as it adapts an existing transformer model to a new domain.
The study tackled the problem of quantifying local strain fields during bladder contraction without artificial speckling by introducing a speckle-free framework using the CoTracker3 transformer model, achieving high pixel accuracy and low strain errors while revealing statistically significant anisotropic contraction patterns in rat specimens.
Accurate quantification of local strain fields during bladder contraction is essential for understanding the biomechanics of bladder micturition, in both health and disease. Conventional digital image correlation (DIC) methods have been successfully applied to various biological tissues; however, this approach requires artificial speckling, which can alter both passive and active properties of the tissue. In this study, we introduce a speckle-free framework for quantifying local strain fields using a state-of-the-art, zero-shot transformer model, CoTracker3. We utilized a custom-designed, portable isotonic biaxial apparatus compatible with multiphoton microscopy (MPM) to demonstrate this approach, successfully tracking natural bladder lumen textures without artificial markers. Benchmark tests validated the method's high pixel accuracy and low strain errors. Our framework effectively captured heterogeneous deformation patterns, despite complex folding and buckling, which conventional DIC often fails to track. Application to in vitro active bladder contractions in four rat specimens (n=4) revealed statistically significant anisotropy (p<0.01), with higher contraction longitudinally compared to circumferentially. Multiphoton microscopy further illustrated and confirmed heterogeneous morphological changes, such as large fold formation during active contraction. This non-invasive approach eliminates speckle-induced artifacts, enabling more physiologically relevant measurements, and has broad applicability for material testing of other biological and engineered systems.