Table 2.

An overview of techniques used in the studies of various cells and tissues characterized by high potential for the use in endometrial research together with examples of their applications.

	Technique	Example of Application
Microscopic techniques	Phase contrast microscopy	Observation of actin filament and microtubules impact on human umbilical vein endothelial cells, chondrocytes, fibroblasts, fibrosarcoma and hepatocellular carcinoma cells [23]
Mechanical properties measurement	Micropipette aspiration	Determination of bovine aortic endothelial cells adhesion [24]
	Optical tweezers	Intercellular adhesion of the early embryo epithelial cells determined by cell displacement [25] Assessment of the influence of neighboring cells on the stiffness of breast cancer cells [26]
	Atomic force microscopy	Detecting fibroblast cell inhomogeneities based on point cell pressing [27] Force mapping: Young’s modulus maps e.g., of mammary gland cancer [28], primary human pulmonary artery endothelial cells [29,30,31], epithelial-like breast carcinoma cells [32] and elasticity maps e.g., of human aortic endothelial cells [33] Elasticity measurements of human umbilical vein endothelial cells, chondrocytes, fibroblasts, fibrosarcoma and hepatocellular carcinoma cells [23] Differentiation of early, intermediate and late cancer stage base on elasticity and viscosity measurement [34]
Combination with atomic force microscopy	Tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy	Chemical composition of sample with higher resolution, e.g., peptides and polysaccharides on bacteria surface [35]