<title>FDTD modelling of the cell membrane and gold nanoparticles effects on optical immersion experiments</title>

Abstract

The FDTD modeling technique is applied to provide additional insight on the effect of the cell membrane thickness in optical immersion enhanced phase contrast microscope imaging. Pilot results on the application of the FDTD approach for studying the implementation of the optical immersion technique for the visualization of single and multiple gold nanoparticles in biological cells are also presented. The paper focuses on three different scenarios considering single biological cells containing i) cytoplasm and membrane, ii) cytoplasm, nucleus and membrane, and iii) cytoplasm, nucleus, gold nanoparticle(s) and membrane. To the best knowledge of authors, this is the first research study discussing the cell membrane thickness and single gold nanoparticle effects on the forward scattered light from biological cells. The potential of the FDTD approach and its applicability to new and promising biomedical optics research areas such as the study of optical immersion technique enhanced bio-imaging is demonstrated.