Abstract

Optical tweezers have been used to trap and manipulate microparticles within living animals. When the optical trap is constructed with an oil-immersion objective, it suffers from spherical aberration. There have been many investigations on the influence of spherical aberration when the particles are trapped in a water medium. However, the dependence of optical force on trapping depth is still ambiguous when the trapped particles are immersed in a high refractive index medium (such as biological tissue, refractive index solution) in experiments. In this paper, the microparticles are immersed in an aqueous solution of glycerol to mimic the cells within biological tissue. As the trapping laser is focused into the specimen, spherical aberration is introduced, degrading the optical trapping performance. It is similar to trapping in water; altering the effective tube length can also compensate for the spherical aberration of the optical trap in a high refractive index medium. Finally, the cells in living mice are trapped by the optical tweezers with the help of spherical aberration compensation.

© 2017 Optical Society of America

Optical trapping of red blood cells in living animals with a water immersion objective

Min-Cheng Zhong, Lei Gong, Jin-Hua Zhou, Zi-Qiang Wang, and Yin-Mei Li
Opt. Lett. 38(23) 5134-5137 (2013)

Rotation of birefringent particles in optical tweezers with spherical aberration

Min-Cheng Zhong, Jin-Hua Zhou, Yu-Xuan Ren, Yin-Mei Li, and Zi-Qiang Wang
Appl. Opt. 48(22) 4397-4402 (2009)

Optical trap stiffness in the presence and absence of spherical aberrations

Karen C. Vermeulen, Gijs J. L. Wuite, Ger J. M. Stienen, and Christoph F. Schmidt
Appl. Opt. 45(8) 1812-1819 (2006)

Efficient in-depth trapping with an oil-immersion objective lens

S. Nader S. Reihani, Mohammad A. Charsooghi, Hamid R. Khalesifard, and Ramin Golestanian
Opt. Lett. 31(6) 766-768 (2006)

Optical tweezers affected by monochromatic aberrations

R. Kampmann and S. Sinzinger
Appl. Opt. 56(5) 1317-1326 (2017)