Beam shaping in flow cytometry with diffractive optical elements

Abstract

Focusing elements are usually employed in the flow cytometry to focus the input laser beam into elliptically shaped Gaussian beam in order to increase power for excitation of fluorescence for high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). While in order to ensure repeatable and reliable signal generation for accurate population discrimination - despite slight deviations of the cell from the flow centre, the shaped beam should be a cubic diffraction region with uniform power intensity across the cell flow stream. However, it is hard for beam shaping with refractive optical elements. In this paper, we present a beam shaping system in flow cytometry with diffractive optical elements (DOEs) to shape the input laser beam to a cubic diffraction region with uniform power intensity. The phase distribution of the DOE is obtained by using the inverse Fresnel diffraction based layered holographic stereogram, and the cubic diffraction region with uniform power intensity within the cell flow channel is well reconstructed. Simulation results demonstrate the good performance of the new beam shaping system.