Wave front engineering for microscopy of living cells

• Published in: Optics express 2005-03, Vol.13 (5), p.1395-1405
• Main Authors: Emiliani, Valentina, Cojoc, Dan, Ferrari, Enrico, Garbin, Valeria, Durieux, Christiane, Coppey-Moisan, Maite, Di Fabrizio, Enzo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Life Sciences; Other
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OPEX.13.001395

A new method to perform simultaneously three dimensional optical sectioning and optical manipulation is presented. The system combines a multi trap optical tweezers with a video microscope to enable axial scanning of living cells while maintaining the trapping configuration at a fixed position. This is achieved compensating the axial movement of the objective by shaping the wave front of the trapping beam with properly diffractive optical elements displayed on a computer controlled spatial light modulator. Our method has been validated in three different experimental configurations. In the first, we decouple the position of a trapping plane from the axial movements of the objective and perform optical sectioning of a circle of beads kept on a fixed plane. In a second experiment, we extend the method to living cell microscopy by showing that mechanical constraints can be applied on the dorsal surface of a cell whilst performing its fluorescence optical sectioning. In the third experiment, we trapped beads in a three dimensional geometry and perform, always through the same objective, an axial scan of the volume delimited by the beads.