Monitoring of laser micromanipulated optically trapped cells by digital holographic microscopy.

For a precise manipulation of particles and cells with laser light as well as for the understanding and the control of the underlying processes it is important to visualize and quantify the response of the specimens. Thus, we investigated if digital holographic microscopy (DHM) can be used in combination with microfluidics to observe optically trapped living cells in a minimally invasive fashion during laser micromanipulation. The obtained results demonstrate that DHM multi-focus phase contrast provides label-free quantitative monitoring of optical manipulation with a temporal resolution of a few milliseconds.