Interference microscopy in cell biophysics. 2. Visualization of individual cells and energy-transducing organelles.

The coherent phase microscopy (CPM) provides a convenient and non-invasive tool for imaging cells and intracellular organelles. In this article, we consider the applications of the CPM method to imaging different cells and energy-transducing intracellular organelles (mitochondria and chloroplasts). Experimental data presented below demonstrate that the optical path length difference of the object, which is the basic optical parameter measured by the CPM method, can serve as an indicator of metabolic states of different biological objects at cellular and subcellular levels of structural organization.