Department of Biomedical Engineering, Technion-Israel institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Department of Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation, Blood Bank and Aphaeresis unit, Rambam Medical Centre, and the Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion, Haifa, Israel.
Sci Rep. 2017 Oct 12;7(1):13031. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-13555-1.
Leucocytes play a key role in our immune system, protecting the body against infections using a wide range of biological mechanisms. Effective imaging and identification of leucocytes within the blood stream in patients is challenging, however, because of their low volume fraction in the blood, the high tissue scattering and the rapid blood flow. Spectrally encoded flow cytometry (SEFC) has recently been demonstrated effective for label-free high-resolution in vivo imaging of blood cells using an optical probe that does not require mechanical scanning. Here, we use SEFC to noninvasively image leucocytes at different imaging depths within small vessels in human volunteers, and identify visual differences in cell brightness and nuclei shapes, that would help distinguish between the two most abundant leucocyte types. The observed differences match the in vitro characteristics of isolated granulocytes and mononuclear cells. The results prove the potential of the system for conducting differential leucocyte count and as an effective research tool for studying the function and distribution of leucocytes in humans.
白细胞在我们的免疫系统中起着关键作用，通过多种生物机制保护身体免受感染。然而，由于血液中白细胞的体积分数低、组织散射高以及血液流动速度快，因此要在患者的血流中有效成像和识别白细胞具有挑战性。最近，光谱编码流式细胞术（SEFC）已被证明可有效使用无需机械扫描的光学探头对血液细胞进行无标记的高分辨率体内成像。在这里，我们使用 SEFC 非侵入性地在人体志愿者的小血管内的不同成像深度对白细胞进行成像，并识别细胞亮度和细胞核形状的视觉差异，这有助于区分两种最丰富的白细胞类型。观察到的差异与分离的粒细胞和单核细胞的体外特征相匹配。结果证明了该系统用于进行差异白细胞计数的潜力，并可作为研究白细胞在人体中的功能和分布的有效研究工具。
