Cell Density Detector Based on Light Beam Focusing.

Aoqun Jian,Huiming Li,Yixia Zhang,Qianqian Duan,Shengbo Sang,Qianwu Zhang

doi:10.3390/mi9110592

Aoqun Jian, Huiming Li + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/mi9110592

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Abstract

Although the lab-on-a-chip system has been successfully applied in a wide variety of fields, the goal of achieving a cell counter with simple operation, low cost, and high accuracy still attracts continuous research efforts. In this paper, the authors explore a cell counter based on light beam focusing to measure the density of adherent cells. In this sensor, the light emitted from the optical fibers is collimated by the collimating lens formed in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The uniformly attached adherent cells act as a convex lens, focusing the collimated light propagated through them. The intensity of the focused light indicates the density of the adherent cells. For Hela cells, a detection limit of 8.3 × 104 cells/mL with a detection range from 0.1 × 106 cells/mL to 1.0 × 106 cells/mL is achieved. This sensor is particularly useful for drug screening, cell pathology analysis, and cancer pre-diagnosis.

Highlights

The cell is the main element of the human body, as well as the basic unit of human life activities
As the oscillator vibrates with high frequency and the response time of the Charge Coupled Device (CCD) is relatively long, the final image is the accumulation of countless activated modes
It was demonstrated that the transmission light intensity varies due to the change of the refractive index (RI) of the focusing unit induced by the cell densities

Summary

Introduction

The cell is the main element of the human body, as well as the basic unit of human life activities. The cell counting plate is achieved by manually injecting the cell suspension into a counting plate and counting the number of cells under a microscope [5,6,7] This method is used by most laboratories and scientific research institutions—from the first instances of cell experimentation to present day—due to its advantageously fast and easy operation [8]. Its basic principle is based on light scattering: as the light emitted by the light source is focused and interacts with a single cell, the relevant cell information is acquired by detecting the spectrum of scattered light [18,19,20] This method can realize the multi-parameter and rapid quantitative analysis of single cells or other biological particles with the advantages of high speed and high precision. A detection limit (LOD) of 8.3 × 104 cells/mL can be achieved by a simple operation

Initial Motive and Design

Spot Optimization

Fabrication

Process of the Optical Sensor

Results and Discussion

Conclusions