Towards wireless health: Lensless on-chip cytometry

A lensfree on-chip imaging platform termed LUCAS (Lensless Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring array platform based on Shadow Imaging) was studied. The classical diffraction pattern of a homogeneous solution of cells was recorded, using spatially incoherent broadband white-light illumination. Different cell types or other micro-objects such as bacteria exhibit unique diffraction patterns and therefore, can be rapidly identified using the developed pattern recognition algorithm. These improvements enabled rapid and label-free characterization of a heterogeneous cell population on a chip without using any lenses over a field of view of about 10 cm² and a depth of field of greater than 4 mm. This on-chip imaging platform has a significant potential towards wireless health applications, as it does not use any lenses or microscope objectives. It also offers an extremely compact device volume that can be integrated within a regular wireless cell-phone, permitting sample loading.