Low-Coherence Reflectometry for Refractive Index Measurements of Cells in Micro-Capillaries

Author： Carpignano Francesca Rigamonti Giulia Mazzini Giuliano Merlo Sabina

Publisher： MDPI

E-ISSN： 1424-8220|16|10|1670-1670

ISSN： 1424-8220

Source： Sensors, Vol.16, Iss.10, 2016-10, pp. : 1670-1670

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

Previous Menu Next

Abstract

The refractive index of cells provides insights into their composition, organization and function. Moreover, a good knowledge of the cell refractive index would allow an improvement of optical cytometric and diagnostic systems. Although interferometric techniques undoubtedly represent a good solution for quantifying optical path variation, obtaining the refractive index of a population of cells non-invasively remains challenging because of the variability in the geometrical thickness of the sample. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of infrared low-coherence reflectometry for non-invasively quantifying the average refractive index of cell populations gently confined in rectangular glass micro-capillaries. A suspension of human red blood cells in plasma is tested as a reference. As a use example, we apply this technique to estimate the average refractive index of cell populations belonging to epithelial and hematological families.