Interference measurement of single living cells' refractive index

Abstract

In recently years there has been a rapid increase of research interests to determine the physical parameters of singe living cells, such as size, shape, and refractive index (RI) as demanded in biological studies and cell-based drug screening. The RI measurement also provides an approach to label-free cell detection. In this project, an optofluidic system on chip has been developed for measuring the single living cell's parameters, such as effective RI, diameter, hence the volume, cell dry mass, cell water mass, cell water concentration and cell total mass, etc.