Boston Chapter of the IEEE Photonics Society

Abstract:  Optical microscopy has been optimized for capturing images of stationary or slow moving objects.   Modern microscopes frequently use multiple sequential exposures to reconstruct phase, three-dimensional, or multispectral images.  This greater information content has proven extremely valuable in cell biology where it can be used to quantify cell geometry, protein content, or organelle structure.  Because they require a relatively long acquisition time, however, these advanced microscopy techniques usually fail when cells are not stationary.  In this talk, I will discuss a few of the instruments that our group has developed to accomplish high information content imaging on moving cells, including a volumetric imaging system, a coded strobe fluorescence microscope, and a hyperspectral imaging flow cytometer.  These systems make possible quantitative measurements on cell volume, cell dry mass, and imaging spectroscopy on thousands of cells in a few minutes.

Recommended Reading: "Dye exclusion microfluidic microscopy", Optics Express (2013), open-access link: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-21-7-8793

Biography:  Ethan Schonbrun received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder in electrical engineering, where he was awarded an NSF IGERT fellowship in Optical Science and Engineering.  He then became a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard University.  Following his postdoc, he received a Junior Fellowship at the Rowland Institute at Harvard and founded the Optofluidic Cytomtery lab.  The group has developed new optical methods for extracting quantitative information about three dimensional morphology, protein mass, and molecular labels from individual cells in large populations.  Using these systems, the group aims at developing deeper understanding of physiological functions on a cellular level using in vitro models.  He has published 34 papers in international peer review journals, is a member of the Optical Society of America, and is a reviewer for several publications.

Location:  MIT Lincoln Laboratory