PhaseRMiC: phase real-time microscope camera for live cell imaging

Chao Chen; Yu-Nan Lu; Huachuan Huang; Keding Yan; Zhilong Jiang; Xiaoliang He; Yan Kong; Cheng Liu; Fei Liu; Liang Xue; Shouyu Wang

doi:10.1364/BOE.430115

PhaseRMiC: phase real-time microscope camera for live cell imaging

Biomed Opt Express. 2021 Jul 26;12(8):5261-5271. doi: 10.1364/BOE.430115. eCollection 2021 Aug 1.

Authors

Chao Chen¹, Yu-Nan Lu², Huachuan Huang³, Keding Yan⁴, Zhilong Jiang¹, Xiaoliang He¹, Yan Kong¹, Cheng Liu^{1

5}, Fei Liu², Liang Xue^{6

7}, Shouyu Wang^{1

2

8}

Affiliations

¹ Computational Optics Laboratory, School of Sciences, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu 214122, China.
² Single Molecule Nanometry Laboratory (Sinmolab), Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China.
³ School of Manufacture Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Testing Technology for Manufacturing Process, Ministry of Education, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, China.
⁴ Advanced Institute of Micro-Nano Intelligent Sensing (AIMNIS), School of Electronic Information Engineering, Xi'an Technological University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
⁵ Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China.
⁶ College of Electronics and Information Engineering, Shanghai University of Electric Power, Shanghai 200090, China.
⁷ xueliangokay@gmail.com.
⁸ shouyu@jiangnan.edu.cn.

Abstract

We design a novel phase real-time microscope camera (PhaseRMiC) for live cell phase imaging. PhaseRMiC has a simple and cost-effective configuration only consisting of a beam splitter and a board-level camera with two CMOS imaging chips. Moreover, integrated with 3-D printed structures, PhaseRMiC has a compact size of 136×91×60 mm³, comparable to many commercial microscope cameras, and can be directly connected to the microscope side port. Additionally, PhaseRMiC can be well adopted in real-time phase imaging proved with satisfied accuracy, good stability and large field of view. Considering its compact and cost-effective device design as well as real-time phase imaging capability, PhaseRMiC is a preferred solution for live cell imaging.