Abstract

Measurement of cell number is important in cell-based in vitro screenings for therapeutic drugs and tissue engineering such as cell culture maintenance, cell plating, and cell growth, as well as monitoring of cell viability, proliferation, and cytotoxicity. We performed cell counting using intensity-based in vitro spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). Adult retinal pigment epithelium cells were cultured on a glass dish to prevent diffuse reflection from the surface, and the dish was tilted by 15° during OCT imaging to reduce coherence noise from specular reflection. Rasterized scanning was performed to generate a three-dimensional volume image with an en face image of the retinal pigment epithelium cell layers. Cell counting was achieved by measuring the density of bright spots after layer extraction and thresholding. Two other cell counting methods were also performed for the purpose of comparison, one using a hemocytometer and the other using water-soluble tetrazolium-1; cell counting by in vitro OCT yielded results better than those from the hemocytometer. Our results showed that in vitro OCT systems can be a powerful tool for estimating and analyzing cell density in a cultured sample without the need for dyeing the sample or causing cell death.

© 2016 IEEE

Retinal pigment epithelium segmentation by polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography

Erich Götzinger, Michael Pircher, Wolfgang Geitzenauer, Christian Ahlers, Bernhard Baumann, Stephan Michels, Ursula Schmidt-Erfurth, and Christoph K. Hitzenberger
Opt. Express 16(21) 16410-16422 (2008)

Visualizing human photoreceptor and retinal pigment epithelium cell mosaics in a single volume scan over an extended field of view with adaptive optics optical coherence tomography

Muhammad Faizan Shirazi, Elisabeth Brunner, Marie Laslandes, Andreas Pollreisz, Christoph K. Hitzenberger, and Michael Pircher
Biomed. Opt. Express 11(8) 4520-4535 (2020)

Pixel-wise segmentation of severely pathologic retinal pigment epithelium and choroidal stroma using multi-contrast Jones matrix optical coherence tomography

Shinnosuke Azuma, Shuichi Makita, Arata Miyazawa, Yasushi Ikuno, Masahiro Miura, and Yoshiaki Yasuno
Biomed. Opt. Express 9(7) 2955-2973 (2018)

Quantifying melanin concentration in retinal pigment epithelium using broadband photoacoustic microscopy

Xiao Shu, Hao Li, Biqin Dong, Cheng Sun, and Hao F. Zhang
Biomed. Opt. Express 8(6) 2851-2865 (2017)

Pulsed illumination spectral-domain optical coherence tomography for human retinal imaging

Jang-Woo You, Teresa C. Chen, Mircea Mujat, B. Hyle Park, and Johannes F. de Boer
Opt. Express 14(15) 6739-6748 (2006)