Optical scheme for simultaneous measurement of light scattering and attenuation for the cell culture quantification

Abstract

Cell cultures are an indispensable tools for scientific research, biomedicine and industry, including food technologies and biotechnologies. For instance, they are used to produce hormones, enzymes, and other complex organic substances. Monitoring of the culture growth and cell counting is an urgent task for the optimization of technological processes and, for instance, for testing of drugs.

Most existing methods for cell counting require sampling from a culture flask. This procedure is time-consuming and is associated with the risks of contamination. Moreover, many laboratories still rely on the use of counting chamber and a light microscope for manual cell counting.

We present a device that is able to monitor the growth of a number of cells in a suspension non-invasively. The device uses a laser beam that pass through the culture flask and measures the intensity of scattered light (side scattering) as a function of coordinate along the beam. This optical scheme provides high sensitivity inherent for the nephelometric methods, but also allows one to directly evaluate the beam attenuation and hence the optical density of the suspension.

We constructed wireless portable prototype for monitoring of cell culture growth directly in the incubator and demonstrate the applicability of the device for Jurkat cells (which grow at low concentration and has negligible optical density) and e.coli bacteria. We also demonstrate accurate estimation of the concentration of polystyrene beads in a suspension with our approach.
The study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (project FSUS-2020-0039).

Speaker

Alexander Moskalensky
Novosibirsk State University
Russian Federation

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