The measuring of nanoparticle toxicity faces an important limitation since it is based on metrics exposure, the concentration at which cells are exposed instead the true concentration inside the cells. In vitro studies of nanomaterials would benefit from the direct measuring of the true intracellular dose of nanoparticles. The objective of the present study was to state whether the intracellular detection of nanodiamonds is possible by measuring the refractive index. Based on optical diffraction tomography of treated live cells, the results show that unlabeled nanoparticles can be detected and localized inside cells. The results were confirmed by fluorescence measurements. Optical diffraction tomography paves the way to measuring the true intracellular concentrations and the localization of nanoparticles which will improve the dose-response paradigm of pharmacology and toxicology in the field of nanomaterials.
Keywords: digital holographic microscope; label-free imaging; nanoparticle; quantitative image analysis; real-time analysis; refractive index; single cell analysis.