On the holographic 3D tracking of in vitro cells characterized by a highly-morphological change

Digital Holography (DH) in microscopic configuration is a powerful tool for the imaging of micro-objects contained into a three dimensional (3D) volume, by a single-shot image acquisition. Many studies report on the ability of DH to track particle, microorganism and cells in 3D. However, very few investigations are performed with objects that change severely their morphology during the observation period. Here we study DH as a tool for 3D tracking an osteosarcoma cell line for which extensive changes in cell morphology are associated to cell motion. Due to the great unpredictable morphological change, retrieving cell's position in 3D can become a complicated issue. We investigate and discuss in this paper how the tridimensional position can be affected by the continuous change of the cells. Moreover we propose and test some strategies to afford the problems and compare it with others approaches. Finally, results on the 3D tracking and comments are reported and illustrated. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America