Tomographic Phase Microscopy as a tool for red blood cell morphological analysis

摘要

Recent discoveries about the optical properties of red blood cells (RBCs) and the perspective of using them as liquid micro-lenses can now be used to explain, and may eventually be used to predict, erythrocyte shape and to screen for blood disease. Nowadays, blood smear test represents a simple and cheap method to estimate the morphology of blood components and to achieve qualitative information regarding the red cell hemoglobinization. Although blood smear is an important analysis for blood disorders, it provides two dimensional morphometric values of cells and this could mislead regarding the real shape of red blood cells. We reveal a fast in-line cyto-tomographic method for full characterization of erythrocytes operating in a microfluidic channel at lab-on-a-chip scale. Whereas RBCs are flowing and rolling along a micro channel, each tomogram can be obtained without any a priori knowledge of the rotation angle of the cell that instead is retrieved from its focusing properties. We demonstrate here an accurate and complete 3D classification of RBCs thus adding a new label-free diagnostic tool for fast blood analysis and effective disease screening.