A Review of Optical Imaging Technologies for Microfluidics

Abstract

Microfluidics can precisely control and manipulate micro-scale fluids, and are also known as lab-on-a-chip or micro total analysis systems. Microfluidics have huge application potential in biology, chemistry, and medicine, among other fields. Coupled with a suitable detection system, the detection and analysis of small-volume and low-concentration samples can be completed. This paper reviews an optical imaging system combined with microfluidics, including bright-field microscopy, chemiluminescence imaging, spectrum-based microscopy imaging, and fluorescence-based microscopy imaging. At the end of the article, we summarize the advantages and disadvantages of each imaging technology.

Curved beam generation and its experimental realization by rectangular prism with asymmetric polynomial back surface

“…Also, generated curved beam has the potential in wide fields of applications, including optical trapping, subwavelength imaging, and signal switching. Furthermore, the effects of the curved optical energy flow can take role in in nanoscopy of biological cells, in nanoparticle trappings [37], in lab-on-a-chip microfluidics [38] and micro-channeling systems [39]. Last but not least, we believe that these results can give new ideas to researchers and pave way for new designs in the field of curved beams and photonic hooks.…”

Integrated Microfluidics for Single‐Cell Separation and On‐Chip Analysis: Novel Applications and Recent Advances

“…Phenomena like absorbance, fluorescence, luminescence (e.g., chemiluminescence), and scattering (e.g., Raman scattering) can reveal information both in cellular and molecular levels, enabling various strategies for biological and biochemical analyses of single cells. [ 145 ] Due to the indispensable nature of optical analysis, microfluidic systems are most often fabricated using transparent materials, commonly glass or PDMS, and are compact enough to be compatible with the use of microscopy. Bright‐field microscopy is a foundational optical technique that is commonly utilized to obtain an initial set of information (e.g., cellular morphology) from a given sample.…”

Dynamic nano-imaging via a microsphere compound lens integrated microfluidic device with a 10× objective lens

“…8 Traditional lens-based microscopic imaging methods directly place microfluidic channels under conventional bench-top optical microscopes. [9][10][11] Later, some optical components, such as microlens and waveguides, are synergistically integrated with microfluidic channels to assist the bench-top imaging system for boosted imaging performance. 12,13 In lens-free schemes, all the optical functional elements, such as light sources, diffractive elements and image sensors, are integrated with the microfluidic chip and thus the whole imaging system is concentrated in a small volume.…”