title: Wave front engineering for microscopy of living cells.
abstract: A new method to perform simultaneously three dimensional optical sectioning and optical manipulation is presented. The system combines a multi trap optical tweezers with a video microscope to enable axial scanning of living cells while maintaining the trapping configuration at a fixed position. This is achieved compensating the axial movement of the objective by shaping the wave front of the trapping beam with properly diffractive optical elements displayed on a computer controlled spatial light modulator. Our method has been validated in three different experimental configurations. In the first, we decouple the position of a trapping plane from the axial movements of the objective and perform optical sectioning of a circle of beads kept on a fixed plane. In a second experiment, we extend the method to living cell microscopy by showing that mechanical constraints can be applied on the dorsal surface of a cell whilst performing its fluorescence optical sectioning. In the third experiment, we trapped beads in a three dimensional geometry and perform, always through the same objective, an axial scan of the volume delimited by the beads.
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Emiliani
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cojoc
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ferrari
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Garbin
authors.forename: Christiane
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Durieux
authors.forename: Maite
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Coppey-Moisan
authors.forename: Enzo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Di Fabrizio