Patent ID: 7811825
Filing Date: 2010-10-12
Classification: G02B

Abstract:
1. A scanning method for scanning samples of biological cells using optical tomography comprising the steps of: concentrating and enriching a cell sample; staining the cell sample; isolating and purifying cells from the cell sample; injecting the isolated and purified cells into a liquid or gel medium to produce a cell mixture; injecting the cell mixture into a capillary tube until a cell appears in a field of view of a pseudo-projection viewing subsystem; acquiring at least one pseudo-projection image of at least one object that is in the field of view using the pseudo-projection viewing subsystem, the pseudo-projection viewing subsystem comprising a fixed objective lens, a detector, and a plurality of mechanical scanning components that are mounted to engage opposing sides of the capillary tube proximate to the fixed objective lens so as to vibrate the capillary tube to enable the at least one object to be axially scanned by the fixed objective lens, wherein each pseudo-projection image thus formed comprises an integration of focal plane images acquired during a single exposure of the detector; rotating the capillary tube about a tube axis to generate additional pseudo-projection images at different views using the pseudo-projection viewing subsystem; determining whether a pseudo-projection data set is complete and, if not, repeating the above steps of injecting into the field of view, acquiring at least one pseudo-projection image, and rotating the capillary tube to generate additional pseudo-projection images of another object; correcting the pseudo-projection images for errors to produce corrected pseudo-projection image information; and from the corrected pseudo-projection image information computing filtered backprojection information for 3D reconstruction.