Rolling angle recovery of flowing cells in holographic tomography exploiting the phase similarity

Holographic tomography allows the 3D mapping of the refractive index of biological samples thanks to reconstruction methods based on the knowledge of illumination directions or rotation angles of the imaged sample. Recently, phase contrast tomographic flow cytometry by digital holography has been demonstrated to reconstruct the three-dimensional refractive index distribution of single cells while they are flowing along microfluidic channels. In this system, the illumination direction is fixed while the sample's rotation is not deterministically known a priori but induced by hydrodynamic forces. We propose here a technique to retrieve the rolling angles, based on a new phase images similarity metric that is capable of identifying a cell's orientations from its 3D positioning while it is flowing along the microfluidic channel. The method is experimentally tested and also validated through appropriate numerical simulations. We provide demonstration of concept by achieving reconstruction of breast cancer cells tomography. (C) 2020 Optical Society of America

Automated summary

Holographic tomography allows for 3D mapping of the refractive index of biological samples by reconstructing based on illumination directions or rotation angles, as demonstrated in phase contrast tomographic flow cytometry by digital holography. This method proposes a technique to retrieve rolling angles of cells flowing along microfluidic channels, tested experimentally and validated through numerical simulations, with demonstration achieved in breast cancer cells tomography.