Page 285 - Optofluidics Fundamentals, Devices, and Applications

CHAPTER 11

Optofluidic

Microscope

Xiquan Cui and Changhuei Yang
Department of Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering, California Institute
of Technology, Pasadena, California

11-1 Introduction
Optical microscopy pervades almost all aspects of modern bioscience
researches and clinical procedures. However, the fundamental micro-
scope design has undergone little change since its invention in the
1600s. A typical microscope still consists of an objective, space for
relaying the image, and an eyepiece or an imaging lens to project a
magnified image onto a person’s retina or a camera. The focus of
modern microscopy research and development has predominantly
been on adding more imaging functionalities to the microscope.
Through the efforts of researchers over the years, phase imaging abil-
ity, fluorescence imaging ability, and other sophisticated techniques
have dramatically broadened the information-gathering capability of
the microscope. Yet, with the development of higher-quality and
broader-capability microscopes, the sophistication and price tag of
microscopes have also steadily crept up in tandem. These microscope
systems will likely remain important workhorses in the foreseeable
future; yet, they are also rapidly becoming limiting factors in biosci-
ence and clinical applications by reason of their relatively low
throughput, high cost, and large space requirements [1]. The number
of microscopes in a typical bioscience laboratory is strongly con-
strained by the cost and size. An increase in the number of micro-
scopes per laboratory by a factor of hundreds or thousands, via a
dramatic microscope cost and size reduction, will lead to significant
efficiency enhancement. In addition, cheap and disposable microscopes
that can fit easily on a person’s fingertip can also dramatically improve

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