Dipartimento di Fisica

Particles interacting with coherent light scatter in a complex optical pattern. Indeed, the angular distribution of this pattern contains information on the structure of the particle. An example of this are the characteristics oscillations of Mie scattering profile of an ideal sphere.

We leveraged this physical principle to extract information on morphological features of single mammalian cells. The system can provide estimates of single-cell size and refractive index (key information for basic biological research and medical diagnostic applications) at high throughput (>100 cells/second) and without requiring immune-specific labeling. 

The proposed system is based on a fast time- and an angle-resolved measurement of scattered light of traveling cells within a microfluidic chip (120mm).  It enables to extract the relevant properties of the single cell by comparing the scattering pattern with the theory predictions.

The proposed system has superior performance for single-cell label-free analysis compared to conventional system (i.e. flow cytometers). Additionally, its minimal setup requirements and high performance make it well suited for compact, point-of-care diagnostic applications, as well as readily integrated into other microfluidic systems for multi-parametric cellular analysis or integrated real-time applications. 

More info here:  https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2023/lc/d2lc01179d