Memmolo Pasquale, Merola Francesco, Miccio Lisa, Mugnano Martina, Ferraro Pietro
National Council of Research-Istituto di Scienze Applicate e Sistemi Intelligenti "E. Caianiello," Via Campi Flegrei 34, 80078 Pozzuoli, Naples, Italy.
J Biomed Opt. 2016 Dec 1;21(12):121509. doi: 10.1117/1.JBO.21.12.121509.
The possibility to adopt biological matter as photonic optical elements can open scenarios in biophotonics research. Recently, it has been demonstrated that a red blood cell (RBC) can be seen as an optofluidic microlens by showing its imaging capability as well as its focal tunability. Moreover, correlation between an RBC’s morphology and its behavior as a refractive optical element has been established and its exploitation for biomedical diagnostic purposes has been foreseen. In fact, any deviation from the healthy RBC morphology can be seen as additional aberration in the optical wavefront passing through the cell. By this concept, accurate localization of focal spots of RBCs can become very useful in the blood disorders identification. We investigate the three-dimensional positioning of such focal spots over time for samples with two different osmolarity conditions, i.e., when they assume discocyte and spherical shapes, respectively. We also demonstrate that a temporal variation of an RBC’s focal points along the optical axis is correlated to the temporal fluctuations in the RBC’s thickness maps. Furthermore, we show a sort of synchronization of the whole erythrocytes ensemble.
采用生物物质作为光子光学元件的可能性可为生物光子学研究开辟新的前景。最近，已经证明红细胞（RBC）通过展示其成像能力及其焦点可调性，可被视为一种光流体微透镜。此外，已经建立了红细胞形态与其作为折射光学元件的行为之间的相关性，并预见到了其在生物医学诊断中的应用。事实上，任何偏离健康红细胞形态的情况都可被视为穿过细胞的光波前的额外像差。基于这一概念，红细胞焦点的精确定位在血液疾病识别中可能会非常有用。我们研究了在两种不同渗透压条件下，即红细胞分别呈现盘状细胞和球形时，这些焦点随时间的三维定位。我们还证明了红细胞焦点沿光轴的时间变化与红细胞厚度图中的时间波动相关。此外，我们展示了整个红细胞群体的某种同步性。
