Diffraction pattern study for cell type identification.

This paper presents our study regarding diffracted intensity distribution in Fresnel and Fraunhofer approximation from different cell types. Starting from experimental information obtained through digital holographic microscopy, we modeled the cell shapes as oblate spheroids and built their phase-only transmission functions. In Fresnel approximation, the experimental and numerical diffraction patterns from mature and immature red blood cells have complementary central intensity values at different distances. The Fraunhofer diffraction patterns of deformed red blood cells were processed in the reciprocal space where, the isoamplitude curves were formed independently for each degree of cell deformation present within every sample; the values on each separate isoamplitude curve are proportional with the percentage of the respective cell type within the sample.