https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-025-00542-y
Research - Living Systems
Tissue stress measurements with Bayesian inversion stress microscopy
1
Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS, Université Paris Cité, 75013, Paris, France
2
CNRS, UMR144, Institut Curie, Paris Université Sciences et Lettres, Sorbonne Université, 75005, Paris, France
3
Department of Physics, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
4
Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin, Erlangen, Germany
5
Physique et Mécanique des Milieux Hétérogènes, CNRS, ESPCI Paris, Université PSL, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité, 75005, Paris, France
a
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Received:
2
August
2025
Accepted:
27
November
2025
Published online:
8
January
2026
Cells within biological tissue are constantly subjected to dynamic mechanical forces. Measuring the internal stress of tissues has proven crucial for our understanding of the role of mechanical forces in fundamental biological processes like morphogenesis, collective migration, cell division or cell elimination and death. Previously, we have introduced Bayesian inversion stress microscopy (BISM), which is relying on measuring cell-generated traction forces in vitro and has proven particularly useful to measure absolute stresses in confined cell monolayers. We further demonstrate the applicability and robustness of BISM across various experimental settings with different boundary conditions, ranging from confined tissues of arbitrary shape to monolayers composed of different cell types. Importantly, BISM does not require assumptions on cell rheology. Therefore, it can be applied to complex heterogeneous tissues consisting of different cell types, as long as they can be grown on a flat substrate. Finally, we compare BISM to other common stress measurement techniques using a coherent experimental setup, followed by a discussion on its limitations and further perspectives.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-025-00542-y.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2026
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
