title: Reflectance confocal microscopy of red blood cells: simulation and experiment.
abstract: Measuring the morphology of red blood cells is important for clinical diagnosis, providing valuable indications on a patient's health. In this work, we have simulated the appearance of normal red blood cells under a reflectance confocal microscope and discovered unique relations between the morphological parameters and the resulting characteristic interference patterns of the cell. The simulation results showed good agreement with in vitro reflectance confocal images of red blood cells, acquired using spectrally encoded flow cytometry that imaged the cells in a linear flow without artificial staining. By matching the simulated patterns to confocal images of the cells, this method could be used for measuring cell morphology in three dimensions and for studying their physiology.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel.
authors.forename: Adel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zeidan
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel.
authors.forename: Dvir
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yelin
keywords: (170.1470) Blood or tissue constituent monitoring; (170.1530) Cell analysis; (170.1790) Confocal microscopy