Confocal reflectance quantitative phase microscopy system for cell biology studies (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Quantitative phase microscopy (QPM), used to measure the refractive index, provides the optical path delay measurement at each point of the specimen under study and becomes an active field in biological science. In this work we present development of confocal reflection phase microscopy system to provide depth resolved quantitative phase information for investigation of intracellular structures and other biological specimen. The system hardware development is mainly divided into two major parts. First, creates a pinhole array for parallel confocal imaging of specimen at multiple locations simultaneously. Here a digital micro mirror device (DMD) is used to generate pinhole array by turning on a subset micro-mirrors arranged on a grid. Second is the detection of phase information of confocal imaging foci by using a common path interferometer. With this novel approach, it is possible to measure the nuclei membrane fluctuations and distinguish them from the plasma membrane fluctuations. Further, depth resolved quantitative phase can be correlated to the intracellular contents and 3D map of refractive index measurements.