Biometrology? Finding Biological, Pathological, Diagnostic Meaning From Critical Length-Scale Measurements

Abstract

The atomic force microscope (AFM) is now a fairly widely used metrological tool for measuring surfaces with nanometer-scale precision, in 3-D. A number of biologists have noticed that untreated biological cells and molecules deposited onto surfaces can also be analyzed by AFM in air or fluids provided the AFM imaging forces do not greatly excede the compressiblity of the specimen. What has gone largely unnoticed in the biological microscopy community is the fact that AFM provides a wealth of opportunity with regard to 3D, nanometer-scale morphometric and biochemical measurements of biomaterials, cells and molecules. The ability to obtain such precise length-scale measurements on biological structures does open up a whole new branch of biological microscopy- something we have termed, Biometrology. A broad definition of Biometrology is, the science of quantifying biological structures such that the measured quantities give rise to biological or diagnostic information.