The equatorial plane of a cell-like structure can be imaged using phase contrast microscopy to obtain a video showing the fluctuations of the membrane.
On the video, the contours can be found using image analysis algorithms, which can then be used to determine the power spectrum of the fluctuation modes in real space amplitude. This can be used, following the steps above, to obtain relevant parameters such as the bending modulus, which is useful for a number of applications in membrane structure research.