Enhanced FTIR bench-top imaging of single biological cells

A new optical system has recently been developed that enables infrared images to be obtained with a pixel resolution of 1 micron on a bench-top instrument using a thermal source. We present here imaging data from two contrasting cellular systems that represent different challenges. Renal carcinoma cells cytospun onto CaF2 have a largely rounded morphology and thus suffer from strong resonant Mie scattering. Skin fibroblast cells, cultured onto CaF2 on the other hand are very spread out so scatter less strongly but are so thin they deliver extremely weak signals. Using suitable pre-processing methods, including PCA noise reduction and RMieS correction, we demonstrate that useful high resolution images can be obtained from either sample.