A method for performing microfluidics imaging of particles within a droplet, said method comprising: positioning a fluidics cartridge (140, 1440) at a cartridge illumination zone, the fluidics cartridge (140, 1440) including top (152, 1452) and bottom (150, 1450) substrates separated by a droplet operations gap (154, 1454), the droplet operations gap (154, 1454) configured to retain a filler fluid including at least one sample droplet containing one or more particles of interest, the fluidics cartridge (140, 1440) including droplet operations electrodes (158, 1458) arranged along at least one of the top (152, 1452) and bottom (150, 1450) substrates to control sample droplet manipulation when activated and deactivated; emitting light by a light source onto the cartridge illumination zone; capturing a raw two-dimensional (2-D) image containing a particle diffraction pattern corresponding to the one or more particles of interest utilizing an image capture device that is held in a predetermined relation relative to the light source and cartridge illumination zone such that the fluidics cartridge (140, 1440) is located at an intermediate point along a path of the light between the light source and the image capture device; and utilizing one or more processors to perform image reconstruction on the raw 2-D image to generate a reconstructed 3-D image to be utilized in connection with at least one of identifying and tracking the one or more particles of interest, analyzing the reconstructed 3-D image by an image processing module for identifying and/or tracking particles in a droplet, the analysis comprising (a) identifying each particle 162 in the 3-D image and identifying criteria of interest associated with each particle; (b) forming a droplet record based on the identified particles and criteria of interest; (c) grouping the particles from the droplet record, into bins based on the criteria of interest; (d) analysing the bins in the droplet record and removing particles from further consideration that do not satisfy the criteria of interest; and (e) counting the number of particles in the droplet record that satisfy one or more criteria for the characteristic of interest (758, 764); (f) performing a droplet operation; (g) repeating steps (a) to (e). capturing a raw two-dimensional (2-D) image containing a particle diffraction pattern corresponding to the one or more particles of interest utilizing an image capture device that is held in a predetermined relation relative to the light source and cartridge illumination zone such that the fluidics cartridge (140, 1440) is located at an intermediate point along a path of the light between the light source and the image capture device; and utilizing one or more processors to perform image reconstruction on the raw 2-D image to generate a reconstructed 3-D image to be utilized in connection with at least one of identifying and tracking the one or more particles of interest, analyzing the reconstructed 3-D image by an image processing module for identifying and/or tracking particles in a droplet, the analysis comprising (a) identifying each particle 162 in the 3-D image and identifying criteria of interest associated with each particle; (b) forming a droplet record based on the identified particles and criteria of interest; (c) grouping the particles from the droplet record, into bins based on the criteria of interest; (d) analysing the bins in the droplet record and removing particles from further consideration that do not satisfy the criteria of interest; and (e) counting the number of particles in the droplet record that satisfy one or more criteria for the characteristic of interest (758, 764); (f) performing a droplet operation; (g) repeating steps (a) to (e). (a) identifying each particle 162 in the 3-D image and identifying criteria of interest associated with each particle; (b) forming a droplet record based on the identified particles and criteria of interest; (c) grouping the particles from the droplet record, into bins based on the criteria of interest; (d) analysing the bins in the droplet record and removing particles from further consideration that do not satisfy the criteria of interest; and (e) counting the number of particles in the droplet record that satisfy one or more criteria for the characteristic of interest (758, 764); (f) performing a droplet operation; (g) repeating steps (a) to (e).