Description
Label-free optical microscopy employs nondestructive approaches to visualize biomedical samples. It utilizes endogenous intrinsic signals rather than specific exogenous markers or genetic modifications, which may perturb the natural biological processes, dynamics, and responses of live cells. A major challenge in optical microscopy of live cells is achieving affordable, label-free, three-dimensional (3D), and fully quantitative measurements that provide high-resolution morphological and content-based mapping of dynamic cell populations at the single-cell level. The extent of spatial and quantitative molecular information that can be extracted by label-free techniques, encompassing not only structural but also content-based data, represents a significant advantage over conventional imaging methods. Off-axis interferometric multiplexing enables the simultaneous capture of several complex wavefronts, each encoded with a distinct interference fringe orientation, using a single camera exposure. This capability gives rise to numerous applications, particularly for imaging dynamic biomedical samples. These include field-of-view multiplexing, depth-of-field multiplexing, angular perspective multiplexing for tomographic phase microscopy in 3D refractive index imaging, multi-wavelength multiplexing for phase unwrapping or spectroscopy, super-resolution interferometric imaging with a synthetic aperture, imaging of ultrafast events, measurement of the Jones matrix and sample birefringence, and the simultaneous acquisition of multiple fluorescence microscopy channels alongside quantitative phase profiles. Each of these techniques opens new opportunities for applying wide-field interferometry to efficiently measure complex biological dynamics. One application that can particularly benefit from interferometric multiplexing is label-free imaging flow cytometry, which holds significant potential for medical diagnosis due to its ability to analyze large numbers of biological cells in flow from samples obtained from body fluids. I will present our recent results in 3D label-free interferometric imaging flow cytometry for liquid biopsies, featuring real-time cell analysis and sorting capabilities for cancer monitoring, blood analysis, and sperm selection for in vitro fertilization.
| I am the presenting author | Yes |
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