Digital Holography and Cell Studies

Digital holography microscopy (DHM) has developed into a broad field, and one of all the interesting applications is to study cells without staining, labeling or in any other way affecting them. Both fixed and living, dying or dead cells can be studied. The first DHM images showing living cells were published in 2004 and 2005 (Carl et al. 2004, Marquet et al. 2005), making this field of research rather new. Digital holography makes it possible to easily measure cell properties that previously have been very difficult to study, such as cell thickness and volume (Marquet et al. 2005, Mölder et al. 2008). Two of the major advantages of DHM is the 3-D imaging possibility and measurements over time. Digital holography has ben used to study several types of cells, such as nerve cells, red blood cells, stem cells and cancer cells (Emery et al. 2007, Kemper et al. 2006, Langehanenberg et al. 2009) . It has also been applied for studies of cell proliferation, cell movement, sub-cellular structures and cell morphology (Kemper et al. 2009, Yu et al. 2009). Both 2-D and 3-D cell movement can be determined ( Langehanenberg et al. 2009). Even cell viability status can be determined using DHM. Interestingly, it is possible to study both single cells and entire populations simultaneously, allowing for very nuanced studies. Older, well known techniques often require some degree of cell disturbance such as the fluorescent antibody labeling required for fluorescense or confocal microscopy studies. In this paper we will present some of the studies made possible by DHM. We will compare DHM with previously used techniques and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of digital holography cell measurements