Associate Researcher at the Beckman Laser Institute, UC Irvine
Quantitative Phase Microscopy for the Evaluation of Cell Morphological Properties
Abstract
Cell morphology and dynamics are related to a variety of significant biomedical properties, such as the metastatic potential of cancer cells, disease related stiffness changes in red blood cells, pluripotency of stem cells, and cell-to-cell interactions by tunneling nanotubules. Phase contrast microscopes or differential interference contrast microscopes are the most popular methods to evaluate the morphological features of live cells, but these methods are not quantitative nor reproducible between different models of microscopes. For these reasons, there has been a push to develop and validate more quantitative microscopy techniques, such as Quantitative Phase Microscopy (QPM). QPM is an interferometry-based technique which measures the optical thickness of cells. Optical thickness is a well-defined physical property and can be used to obtain quantitative and reproducible thickness mapping of live cells within a clear background. By means of the image processing on optical thickness, QPM enables the tracing of cell boundaries and the quantification of vectors of membrane motion. Moreover, QPM does not require fluorescence dye (label free) and it enables long term, time-lapse imaging of live cells for more than 48 hours. In this talk, Toyohiko Yamauchi will introduce the theory of QPM and detail his efforts in designing, building, and testing QPM instruments.
Toyohiko installed his latest QPM prototype in the Beckman Laser Institute in February 2018 and has been building new research collaborations throughout UCI to develop new applications. In the latter half of this seminar, several active collaborators will also talk about ongoing and future studies with QPM.
Biography
Toyohiko Yamauchi graduated from the University of Tokyo with undergraduate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering. Toyohiko has been an application researcher of optical interferometry for Hamamatsu Photonics (Japan) for more than 10 years. From 2008 to 2010, Toyohiko worked as a visiting scientist with Dr. Michael S. Feld at the MIT-Laser Biomedical Research Center to develop his quantitative phase microscope. After returning to Japan, Toyohiko joined a government sponsored New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) project for low-invasive quality assessment of induced pluripotent stem cells from 2011 to 2014. Since then, Toyohiko has been collaborating with biologists in both the US and in Japan for application development of QPM and he most recently spent 18 months at UCI as a visiting researcher.
For more information or to schedule a meeting with the speaker, please contact Hanna Kim.
