I-Corps: InCh holographic microscope for cell diagnostics

ICorps项目旨在评估用于临床护理点的新型光学细胞成像模式的商业机会。显微镜系统将采用一种独特的样品支架，称为干涉室（英寸），它可以用简单，廉价但坚固的光学系统对细胞形态进行全息成像。值得注意的是，这种方法不需要任何样品制备，例如添加荧光标记，并且在单次采集中获得细胞样品的宽视场图像，即不需要样品或光学扫描。全息细胞图像可以很容易地处理计算单个细胞的数值形态参数，从而为医学诊断和健康状况提供重要信息。该团队将严格评估商业需求，目标市场，制定许可策略，并创建InCh显微镜的商业原型，以向潜在的合作伙伴和投资者展示。这项研究的长期目标是创造一种新的生物医学诊断产品，用于在护理点使用简单，强大的成像设备生成全息细胞图像，特别是红细胞。将对红细胞进行初步检测，以计算通常通过手工血液涂片样本细胞计数获得的参数。进一步的应用包括识别由于疟疾、南美锥虫病和镰状细胞性贫血引起的红细胞和白细胞异常，以及用于癌症生物学和干细胞研究等实验室应用的活细胞实时成像。这项研究具有重大的变革潜力，因为它可以极大地增加护理点诊断信息的可用性。如果成功，这项技术可以影响国内以及发展中国家的医疗保健。此外，这项技术可以作为一种工具，通过为生物医学研究提供从血液样本中获取和快速分析信息的手段，从而实现未来的发现。

This ICorps project seeks to evaluate the business opportunity for a new optical cellular imaging modality for use at the clinical point of care. The microscope system will employ a unique sample holder, called the interferometric-chamber (InCh) which enables holographic imaging of cell morphology with a simple, inexpensive yet robust optical system. Significantly, this approach does not require any sample preparation, such as addition of fluorescent labels, and obtains wide field images of cell samples in a single acquisition, i.e., no sample or optical scan is needed. Holographic cell images can be easily processed to calculate numerical morphological parameters of individual cells and thus provide important information for medical diagnosis and health status. The proposed team will critically evaluate the commercial need, target markets and develop a licensing strategy as well as create a commercial prototype of the InCh microscope for demonstration to potential partners and investors. The long-range goal of this research is to create a new biomedical diagnostic product for the purpose of generating holographic cell images, particularly red blood cells, at the point of care using a simple, robust imaging device. Initial testing will be conducted on red blood cells to calculate parameters usually obtained by manual cell counting of blood smear samples. Further applications include identifying abnormalities of the red and white blood cells due to malaria, chagas and sickle cell anemia as well as real time imaging of living cells for laboratory applications such as cancer biology and stem cell research. This research has significant transformative potential in that it can dramatically increase the availability of diagnostic information at the point of care. If successful, this technology can impact healthcare domestically as well as in the developing world. Further, this technology can be used as a tool to enable future discoveries by providing a means to obtain and rapidly analyze information from blood samples for biomedical studies.