A method for analysing tissue motion and deformation during mammalian organogenesis

SUMMARY Understanding tissue morphogenesis is an important goal in developmental biology and tissue engineering. Accurately describing tissue deformation processes and how cell rearrangements contribute to these is a challenging task. Live analysis of morphogenesis in 3D is frequently used to obtain source data that allow to extract such features from developing organs. However, several limitations are encountered when applying these methodologies to mammalian embryos. The mouse embryo is the most frequently used model, but most studies use a very limited number of specimens and present only individual acquisitions due to constraints imposed by embryo culture and imaging. Here we used data from live analysis of embryonic heart development to develop methodologies that allow to 1) deduce tissue deformation and cell movements from image intensity flows, 2) stage and register data from several specimens/acquisitions to a dynamic consensus model of heart development, 3) statistically calculate and map to the model tissue growth and anisotropy and 4) generate a digital model of heart development that allows in-silico pseudo-cell fate mapping. Our methodology will greatly facilitate the understanding of morphogenetic processes underlying mammalian organogenesis.