Seeing through silicon
Scientists at MIT and the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) have developed a new type of microscopy that can image cells through a silicon wafer, allowing them to precisely measure the size and mechanical behavior of cells behind the wafer.The new technology, which relies on near-infrared light, could help scientists learn more about diseased or infected cells as they flow through silicon microfluidic devices.“This has the potential to merge research in cellular visualization with all the exciting things you can do on a silicon wafer,” says Ishan Barman, a former postdoc in MIT’s Laser Biomedical Research Center (LBRC) and one of the lead authors of a paper describing the technology in the Oct. 2 issue of the journal Scientific Reports.Other lead authors of the paper are former MIT postdoc Narahara Chari Dingari and UTA graduate students Bipin Joshi and Nelson Cardenas. The senior author is Samarendra Mohanty, an assistant...