Fluorescence microscopy imaging with a Fresnel zone plate array based optofluidic microscope.

We report the implementation of an on-chip microscope system, termed fluorescence optofluidic microscope (FOFM), which is capable of fluorescence microscopy imaging of samples in fluid media. The FOFM employs an array of Fresnel zone plates (FZP) to generate an array of focused light spots within a microfluidic channel. As a sample flows through the channel and across the array of focused light spots, the fluorescence emissions are collected by a filter-coated CMOS sensor, which serves as the channel's floor. The collected data can then be processed to render fluorescence microscopy images at a resolution determined by the focused light spot size (experimentally measured as 0.65 μm FWHM). In our experiments, our established resolution was 1.0 μm due to Nyquist criterion consideration. As a demonstration, we show that such a system can be used to image the cell nuclei stained by Acridine Orange and cytoplasm labeled by Qtracker(®). This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2011