Quantitative phase microscopy of cells in flow using flipping interferometry (Conference Presentation)

Measurements of biological cells during flow are highly important for medical diagnosis based on cell sorting. In the case of cell imaging during flow, very rapid image acquisition capabilities are required to enable fast cell flow for analyzing a sufficient number of cells. We present a new flipping interferometry (FI) module for simplified off-axis close-to-common-path interferometric phase microscopy. This wide-field off-axis interferometric module provides rapid quantitative phase microscopy of biological cells during flow in a microfluidic channel, with potential of integration into cell sorting devices. Various experimental demonstrations are presented.