Digital Off-Axis Holographic Microscopy: from Cells Visualization, to Phase Shift Values, Ending with Physiological Parameters Evolution

摘要

Digital off-axis holographic microscopy (DoHM) is a modern technique, which provides quantitative information about the samples in three dimensions. DoHM allows the analysis of living cells in their growth medium, without any kind of additional markers, leading to the values of many physiological parameters after processing the reconstructed images. This paper is a review about the research and development applications implying DoHM for the analysis of different biological samples: blood cells, yeast cells, neurons, cancer cells, and osteoblasts cells. The focus is on the values of the final physiological parameters, which can be determined with high accuracy in marker-free conditions, at the level of the single cell, such as refractive indices, hemoglobin content, dry mass, amplitude of the membrane fluctuations, cells elasticity, cells dimensions, rate of sedimentation, and transmembranar fluxes. Few aspects about the decoupling and focusing procedures are also summarized. This review addresses to students and researchers interested in real-time analysis of living cells in their natural environment.