title: Low-Coherence Reflectometry for Refractive Index Measurements of Cells in Micro-Capillaries.
abstract: The refractive index of cells provides insights into their composition, organization and function. Moreover, a good knowledge of the cell refractive index would allow an improvement of optical cytometric and diagnostic systems. Although interferometric techniques undoubtedly represent a good solution for quantifying optical path variation, obtaining the refractive index of a population of cells non-invasively remains challenging because of the variability in the geometrical thickness of the sample. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of infrared low-coherence reflectometry for non-invasively quantifying the average refractive index of cell populations gently confined in rectangular glass micro-capillaries. A suspension of human red blood cells in plasma is tested as a reference. As a use example, we apply this technique to estimate the average refractive index of cell populations belonging to epithelial and hematological families.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale e dell'Informazione, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Via Ferrata 5, I-27100 Pavia, Italy. carpignano@unipv.it.
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Carpignano
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale e dell'Informazione, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Via Ferrata 5, I-27100 Pavia, Italy. giulia.rigamonti01@universitadiapavia.it.
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rigamonti
authors.affiliation: Istituto di Genetica Molecolare IGM-C.N.R., Via Abbiategrasso 207, I-27100 Pavia, Italy. mazzi@igm.cnr.it.|Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie "L. Spallanzani", Università degli Studi di Pavia, Via Ferrata 9, I-27100 Pavia, Italy. mazzi@igm.cnr.it.
authors.forename: Giuliano
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mazzini
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale e dell'Informazione, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Via Ferrata 5, I-27100 Pavia, Italy. sabina.merlo@unipv.it.
authors.forename: Sabina
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Merlo
mesh_terms: D002196:Capillaries / Q000166:cytology*; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D007368:Interferometry / Q000379:methods*; D012031:Refractometry / Q000379:methods*
keywords: cell cultures; cell refractive index; drug discovery; infrared radiation; low-coherence reflectometry; rectangular micro-capillary