Columnar deformation of human red blood cell by highly localized fiber optic Bessel beam stretcher

Abstract

A single human red blood cell was optically stretched along two counter-propagating fiber-optic Bessel-like beams in an integrated lab-on-a-chip structure. The beam enabled highly localized stretching of RBC, and it induced a nonlinear mechanical deformation to finally reach an irreversible columnar shape that has not been reported. We characterized and systematically quantified this optically induced mechanical deformation by the geometrical aspect ratio of stretched RBC and the irreversible stretching time. The proposed RBC mechanism can realize a versatile and compact opto-mechanical platform for optical diagnosis of biological substances in the single cell level.

Optical tweezers and their applications

“…manner [140] as the cells flow in a microchannel through the stretching beams rather than being captured individually in optical tweezers. In some situations, extreme stretching can give rise to irrecoverable shape changes of the cell into a so-called "columnar" form [141].…”

Optical manipulation of a dielectric particle along polygonal closed-loop geometries within a single water droplet

“…Fiber optic Bessel beam generators have the same outer diameter as the conventional optical fibers so that our optical polygon scheme can be readily applied to a bio-opto-fluidic PDMS chamber, as demonstrated in Lee et al 29 . Circulating cells in this fashion could be used to expose them to differing media and regions of complementary interrogation on chip.…”

“…The Bessel beam allows tight confinement of the trapped particle in the transverse plane and extended the transport length along the longitudinal direction along the beam axis. In previous work, we demonstrated an all-fiber Bessel beam generator using Fourier transform 22 – 27 and multimode interference 28 , 29 which provided highly efficient trapping and transportation of dielectric particles in a microscopic aqueous environment, compatible with microfluidic manipulation.…”

Fiber-Based Optical Gun for Particle Shooting

“…Therefore, as a controllable integrated device, the optical gun can be used as a basic building block in integrated fiber-based devices and a powerful tool in life and medical sciences. Furthermore, several other specialty optical fibers such as the Bessel fiber, Airy fiber, , and vortex fiber can be used to improve the performance of the optical gun.…”