High-Throughput Cell Imaging, Counting and Characterization on a Chip

We introduce a lensfree on chip imaging platform that enables high-throughput monitoring, counting, and identification of several different microscopic objects such as different cell types within a heterogeneous solution. This imaging platform can in principle be miniaturized to a hand-held device that can be used by minimally trained health care providers at the point-of-care to measure the cell count of e.g., red blood cells from whole blood samples with a counting speed of >100,000 cells/sec. This novel optical imaging platform can also be merged with microfluidic systems to be able to rapidly monitor and count hundreds of thousand of cells within a field-of-view (FOV) of ∼10 cm² in vitro. The immediate impact of this lensfree on chip cell counting approach is its improved speed, significantly larger field-of-view and simplified design that permits considerable miniaturization of the entire cell counting device.