Biolens behavior of RBCs under optically-induced mechanical stress

Merola, F., Barroso, A., Miccio, L., Memmolo, P., Mugnano, M., Ferraro, P., Denz, C.

Zusammenfassung

In this work, the optical behavior of Red Blood Cells (RBCs) under an opticallyinducedmechanical stress was studied. Exploiting the new findings concerning theoptical lens-like behavior of RBCs, the variations of the wavefront refracted byoptically-deformed RBCs were further investigated. Experimental analysis have beenperformed through the combination of digital holography and numerical analysisbased on Zernike polynomials, while the biological lens is deformed under the actionof multiple dynamic optical tweezers. Detailed wavefront analysis provides comprehensiveinformation about the aberrations induced by the applied mechanical stress. Bythis approach it was shown that the optical properties of RBCs in their discocyte formcan be affected in a different way depending on the geometry of the deformation. Inanalogy to classical optical testing procedures, optical parameters can be correlated to aparticular mechanical deformation. This could open new routes for analyzing cell elasticityby examining optical parameters instead of direct but with low resolution strainanalysis, thanks to the high sensitivity of the interferometric tool. Future application ofthis approach could lead to early detection and diagnosis of blood diseases through asingle-step wavefront analysis for evaluating different cells elasticity.