Volume 9 Issue 4
A Field-Portable Cell Analyzer without a Microscope and Reagents
Dongmin Seo, Sangwoo Oh, Moonjin Lee, Yongha Hwang and Sungkyu Seo
1Department of Electronics and Information Engineering, Korea University, Sejong 30019, Korea
2Maritime Safety Research Division, Korea Research Institute of Ships & Ocean Engineering, Daejeon 34103, Korea
3Department of Electro-Mechanical Systems Engineering, Korea University, Sejong 30019, Korea
*Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
This paper demonstrates a commercial-level field-portable lens-free cell analyzer called the NaviCell (No-stain and Automated Versatile Innovative cell analyzer) capable of automatically analyzing cell count and viability without employing an optical microscope and reagents. Based on the lens-free shadow imaging technique, the NaviCell (162 × 135 × 138 mm3 and 1.02 kg) has the advantage of providing analysis results with improved standard deviation between measurement results, owing to its large field of view. Importantly, the cell counting and viability testing can be analyzed without the use of any reagent, thereby simplifying the measurement procedure and reducing potential errors during sample preparation. In this study, the performance of the NaviCell for cell counting and viability testing was demonstrated using 13 and six cell lines, respectively. Based on the results of the hemocytometer (de facto standard), the error rate (ER) and coefficient of variation (CV) of the NaviCell are approximately 3.27 and 2.16 times better than the commercial cell counter, respectively. The cell viability testing of the NaviCell also showed an ER and CV performance improvement of 5.09 and 1.8 times, respectively, demonstrating sufficient potential in the field of cell analysis.
Keywords:lens-free cell analyzer; automatic cell analysis algorithm; reagent-free; cell counting; viability analysis; Lens-Free Shadow Imaging Technology (LSIT)