We present the multimodal characterization of thin polymeric membrane by digital holography-based methods. Herein, two microscope techniques had been chosen to reveal the morphology of membranes, which are conventional off-axis Digital Holography (DH) and Space-Time Digital Holography (STDH). The complementary features of the different methods allow for a bottom-up analysis of the related membranes. Meanwhile, the dynamic forming process of polymeric membrane at the air-water interface is revealed in real-time by CDH. By comparing the imaging results of different methods, the application range of different imaging methods is analyzed in detail.
With the improvement in industrial production technologies, many products related to thin-film materials have been produced, especially in the field of daily chemistry. Because of its special physical and chemical properties, film material has become the best carrier, and a detailed measurement of its characteristics is highly required. The thickness characterizing of the thin film is a long-term challenge, one of the well-known methods is the interferometry. Recently, digital holographic approaches have been considered as one of the best candidates for thin film thickness mapping; it allows real-time, contactless, label-free, and full-field thickness measurement. Thanks to above features, holography-based thin film fabrication paradigm has been established rapidly. In this framework, we present a strategy for forming free-standing thin liquid film under the monitoring of Digital Holography (DH): a customized iris diaphragm has been used to stretch the liquid droplet inside to a thin liquid film. Under the condition of quantitatively adjusting the opening speed and radius of the iris, the precise manufacturing of the desired thin film can be achieved. In this case, DH is implemented to provide the thickness distribution of the droplet during stretching; the real-time thickness mapping of thin film builds up a close loop controlling for fabrication process. Based on this strategy, we performed a series experiments of thin liquid films fabrication and the opening process of thin film have been studied by spatiotemporal modeling. The results show that customized iris diaphragm is a good strategy for quantitative fabrication of thin liquid films.
Lab-on-a-Chip microfluidic devices represent an innovative and cost-effective solution in the current trend of miniaturization and simplification of imaging flow cytometry. Cell tracking is a fundamental technique for investigating a variety of biophysical processes, from intracellular dynamics to the characterization of cell motility and migration. The conventional target positioning based on holography is typically addressed by decoupling the calculation of the optical axis position and the transverse coordinates. The 2D positions of each cell are located based on the phase contrast. The axial position of the cell area is calculated by refocused external criterion in complex amplitude wavefront. Computing resources and time consumption may increase because all the frames need to be performed calculations in the spatial frequency domain. We proposed a space-time digital hologram encoding method to speed up 3D holographic particle tracking. The 2D positions of each cell are directly located by morphological calculation based on the hologram. The complex amplitude wavefronts are directly reconstructed by space-time phase shifting to calculate the axial position by refocused external criterion. Only spatial calculation is considered in the proposed method. The proposed approach can be used in microfluidics to analyze objects flowing in microfluidics channels.
Digital Holography (DH) is a label-free optical microscopy technique which allows reconstructing the Quantitative Phase Maps (QPMs) of transparent biological specimens. In a QPM, the phase-contrast is endogenous and is due to the Refractive Index (RI) and thickness differences. Although phase-contrast allows a quantitative characterization of the whole biological sample, it is often not enough to ensure an adequate intracellular segmentation, also because of the lack of exogenous markers, e.g., fluorescent dyes. Here we investigate a biological strategy for increasing the intracellular contrast inside epidermal onion cells to recognize their nuclei within the QPMs. Plant cells continuously undergo dehydration-hydration loops during their lifetime since dehydration is reversible when plasmolysis is not reached. Therefore, by setting specific environmental temperature and humidity, we can induce dehydration, thus provoking the water evaporation from the vacuole and therefore increasing the nucleus-cytoplasm contrast. Moreover, the reduction of the turgor pressure causes a rearrangement of the cytoskeleton, thus allowing nuclear roto-translations. We exploit an ad-hoc algorithm to estimate the nucleus rolling angles around the image plane. Then, we perform phase-contrast tomography to reconstruct the three-dimensional (3D) RI distribution of the plant cells’ nuclei by operating in complete reversible conditions, i.e., before plasmolysis when no cell damage has occurred. Finally, we segment the nuclear tomograms to isolate the 3D nucleoli, thus providing quantitative measurements about their volumes, dry masses, and RI statistics. In this way, DH can be further exploited for the label-free and non-invasive analysis of several plant cell lines at the nuclear and sub-nuclear level.
Optofluidic microscopy has been an open challenge during past decade; it is also a well-established paradigm where precise control of microfluidic streams is smartly exploited. Digital Holography (DH) has been proved as one of the optimal tools for flow-cytometry, cell sorting and classification, cell counting and study of cell mechanics. In this framework, Space-Time Digital Holography (STDH) is a convenient complement to conventional holographic cell imaging. Thanks to a spatiotemporal reassembling strategy, one single space-time hologram can efficiently store information of a series of time-lapse holograms using a small subset of detecting elements, e.g. a linear sensor array. In this case, the modulated pattern of interference fringes is projected onto a new hybrid space-time domain and reassembled by time series. Here we propose a phase-retrieval process in STDH for optofluidics, which allows the quantitative phase information reconstruction for flowing cells in different focus planes simultaneously with extended field of view. For a space-time hologram storing information from flowing cells, a unique flow velocity meeting the matching condition of STDH would enable accurate space-time phase shifting. In the case of mismatches between cells speed and recording frame rate, an ad-hoc reconstruction algorithm is developed that compensates for the mismatch and retrieves the correct phase-contrast map of the sample by smartly adapting the method to the microfluidic speed. Based on the proposed strategy, we show the 4D mapping of flowing cells in space-time domain; in other words, the ASTDH is able to encode efficiently a 4D information in a 2D map, self-adapting to unexpected variations of the flow profiles.
Probiotic bacteria are microbial species known to confer benefits to health. In order to act effectively as probiotics, microencapsulated bacteria have to maintain their viability during the gastro-intestinal transit and their motility to reach epithelial cells of the intestine. Here we use Bio-Speckle Dynamic Assays (BSDA) for rapidly testing the microencapsulation performance in experiments simulating gastro-intestinal conditions. Label-free samples are probed by coherent light to infer ensemble motility information. Then, we use Digital Holography (DH) in transmission microscopy mode and 3D tracking as complementary tools to infer strain-specific locomotion profiles at the single cell level.
Polymeric thin films represent an emerging industrial area driven by their enormous technological and commercial potential in interdisciplinary sectors such as chemistry, material science, engineering, and physics. The large selection in terms of materials/composites and the wide range of technological solutions that could be used for their fabrication could create confusion for the final user requiring a quantitative characterization of their properties. This analysis could be even more complex in the case of functionalized polymeric films such as the samples reported in this work. Here we present how thin polymer films can be wholly characterized by applying a multiplicity of optical methods. Films were realized by a special liquid one-step process. Moreover, such polymer films were functionalized here for the first time by mesoporous silica nanoparticles. The nanoparticles were added to a polymeric matrix. We show that a full characterization was achieved by employing three different microscope techniques, i.e., scanning electron microscope, digital holography (DH), and space-time DH. Exploiting such a multimodal methodology can be of great benefit for characterizing the functionalized polymeric thin films. In fact, multiple characterization in different conditions was possible. The results reported in terms of morphological information, thickness distribution, three-dimensional (3D) mapping, large field of view, high magnification, and super resolution of the zoomed area offer a good solution for testing materials and obtaining a quantitative characterization and whole inspection in the case of complex polymeric samples.
The digital holography method has been implemented to several industrial systems with the aim of improving new products by quantitative measurement. Nowadays, digital holography (DH) has been considered an important measurement tool, owing to the abilities of non-contact, label-free, quantitative, high-resolution and real-time. The inherent characteristics of DH makes it a powerful tool for visualization and testing of soft matter, as well as in-situ and real-time characterization of bottom-up fabrication processes. Herein, we report the most useful applications of soft matter, where the capabilities offered by DH, such as three-dimensional (3D) imaging, extended focus, 3D tracking, full-field analysis, high sensitivity, and wide measurement’s range, permit completely non-invasive characterizations on a full-scale. Taking the advantages of DH measurement, the possibility of numerically managing the complex wavefront scattered or transmitted by the sample under investigation allows the extraction of all information through a full-digital modality. Meanwhile, the numerical diffraction propagation process allows object imaging well-in-focus during dynamic process. This also creates the possibility to retrieve phase-contrast maps that enable quantitative measurements of the sample in full-field mode and 3D. Moreover, DH measurement has good ability to manage and remove aberrations in the optical system using simple and flexible methods, thus simplifying the optical apparatus and measurement operations. Owing to these unique features of DH, we have possibility to better study the world of soft-matter.
Tomographic phase microscopy in cytometry environment is feasible at single cell level and without the a-priori knowledge of the cell orientation. In the present paper we demonstrate different strategies for recovery the rotation angles of single cells and clusters when rotating into microfluidic channels, thus realistically opening to the implementation of marker-free cytofluorimeter for three-dimensional imaging of biological fluids. The pioneering developed strategies allows to measure quantitatively the inner distribution of the refractive indexes inside the cell volume avoiding the use of chemical and fluorescent tags. The imaging apparatus is based on label-free Digital Holography in microscopy setup designed in transmission geometry to image 700x700μm Field of View with lateral resolution of 0.5μm. Digital Holography is perfectly suited for imaging in microchannels as it allows the numerical refocusing of sample into a three-dimensional volume. In the present paper, such imaging arrangement is combined with a high-precision pumping system connected to a microfluidic channel that allow the complete rotation of the flowing cells into the Field of View. High-speed 25Megapixel camera acquires holographic set measurements of all rotating cells that are numerically processed to obtain quantitative two-dimensional phase-contrast maps at different view angles. Accurate numerical algorithms allow to tag each phasecontrast maps with the rotation angle in the microchannel. The couples made of phase-contrast map and measured angle are given as input at tomography algorithms to obtain the refractive index distribution into the cell volume. The approach in principles works properly for any kind of biological matter subjected to rotation as already demonstrated in case of nuclei of plant cells during dehydration. Furthermore, the same approach allows to show the three-dimensional distribution of internalized nano-particles as in case of nano-graphene oxide. The most important achievement and innovation of such strategy is the high-throughput phase-contrast tomography at single cell level that opens to new diagnostic tool thanks to the possibility to have statistically relevant measurement on cell population and also for the possibility to use artificial intelligence architecture for cell identification and classification.
Visualizing the intracellular dynamics of plant cells has been an open challenge for modern botany, agronomy and pharmacy. In this paper, we proposed an approach to improve the phase contrast during plant cell holographic imaging by cells’ dehydration, and used this method to realize the observation of cytoplasmic circulation inside the living onion epithelial cell. The dehydration process can be seen as a sort of label-free contrast agent for better imaging biological processes. We have investigated live onion epidermal cells, observing their inner dynamics during long time recordings using a digital holographic microscopy system. For the experiments, an off-axis digital holography setup in transmission configuration with double spherical wave interference was used to record the digital holograms of onion cells. Then, we performed long-term time lapse holographic recordings of onion epidermal cells, and the results show that the intracellular tissue structure and the dynamic behavior of the cytoskeleton features and nuclei can be better exhibited via high-contrast phase imaging under cell dehydration conditions. In this case, the movements of intracellular filaments and the nucleus are observed via dynamical high-contrast phase imaging during the dehydration process. The experimental results clearly show the positive effect of dehydration process on intracellular imaging quality, and create the possibility to track the movement of plant organelles. In sum, thanks to the dehydration process of plant cells, holographic phase contrast enhancement imaging is realized.
Quantitative measurement for thin-film thickness has been a widely studied issue, and, visualizing and characterizing for full-field thin-film evolution can provide effective data support for membrane science, polymer chemistry, biomaterials, applied Chemistry, etc. Interferometry was considered the most useful tool to measure film thickness in past decades. However, there were deficiencies in imaging speed and field of view for conventical interferometric measurement. In this paper, we proposed a fusion method to achieve full-field and quantitative analysis of the thin liquid film at nanoscale by using Digital Holography (DH) and White Light Interferometry (WLI) simultaneously. Compared with our previous holographic studies on thin film measurement, this new method can overcome the shortcomings of the holographic method related to registration and reconstruction. In addition, these parallel experiments can also provide a reference when we have to make a choice between DH and WLI. For the thickness reconstruction process, the entire life cycle registration is no longer required to obtain the thickness information. Moreover, the region where the thin film thickness is less than half the wavelength is now measurable. Thanks to the fusion processing, the film thickness calibration can be obtained without any background subtraction, in the meantime, the background hologram becomes not essential in the holographic recording process.
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