Islet microencapsulation is a promising solution to diabetes treatment, but
its quality control based on manual microscopic inspection is extremely
low-throughput, highly variable and laborious. This study presents a
high-throughput islet-encapsulation quality screening system based on lens-free
on-chip imaging with a wide field-of-view of 18.15 cm^2, which is more than 100
times larger than that of a lens-based optical microscope, enabling it to image
and analyze ~8,000 microcapsules in a single frame. Custom-written image
reconstruction and processing software provides the user with clinically
important information, such as microcapsule count, size, intactness, and
information on whether each capsule contains an islet. This high-throughput and
cost-effective platform can be useful for researchers to develop better
encapsulation protocols as well as perform quality control prior to
transplantation
