Optophysiology of cardiomyocytes: characterizing cellular motion with quantitative phase imaging

Abstract

Quantitative phase imaging enables precise characterization of cellular shape and motion. Variation of cell volume in populations of cardiomyocytes can help distinguish their types, while changes in optical thickness during beating cycle identify contraction and relaxation periods and elucidate cell dynamics. Parameters such as characteristic cycle shape, beating frequency, duration and regularity can be used to classify stem-cell derived cardiomyocytes according to their health and, potentially, cell type. Unlike classical patchclamp based electrophysiological characterization of cardiomyocytes, this interferometric approach enables rapid and non-destructive analysis of large populations of cells, with longitudinal follow-up, and applications to tissue regeneration, personalized medicine, and drug testing. References and links1. I. Y. Chen, E. Matsa, and J. C. Wu, "Induced pluripotent stem cells: at the heart of cardiovascular precision medicine," Nat. Rev. Cardiol. 13(6), 333-349 (2016). 2. M. Ben-Ari, S. Naor, N. Zeevi-Levin, R. Schick, R. Ben Jehuda, I. Reiter, A. Raveh, I. Grijnevitch, O. Barak, M.R. Rosen, A. Weissman, and O. Binah, "Developmental changes in electrophysiological characteristics of human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes," Heart Rhythm 13(12), 2379-2387 (2016). January, "High purity human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) derived cardiomyocytes: electrophysiological properties of action potentials and ionic currents," Am.

Interferometric mapping of material properties using thermal perturbation

“…Similarly, photothermal microscopy is based on inducing small changes in refraction or scattering by periodic heating with a tightly focused laser beam and detecting them using lock-in amplification ( 17 , 18 ). Since this technique is based on slow signal integration and point-by-point scanning, it is not suitable for simultaneous imaging of a large field or mapping sample dynamics, unlike single-shot full-field interferometric techniques like quantitative phase imaging (QPI) ( 19 – 25 ).…”