Lensfree diffractive tomography for the imaging of 3D cell cultures

New microscopes are needed to help realize the full potential of 3D organoid culture studies. In order to image large volumes of 3D organoid cultures while preserving the ability to catch every single cell, we propose a new imaging platform based on lensfree microscopy. We have built a lensfree diffractive tomography setup performing multi-angle acquisitions of 3D organoid culture embedded in Matrigel and developed a dedicated 3D holographic reconstruction algorithm based on the Fourier diffraction theorem. With this new imaging platform, we have been able to reconstruct a 3D volume as large as 21.5 mm (3) of a 3D organoid culture of prostatic RWPE1 cells showing the ability of these cells to assemble in 3D intricate cellular network at the mesoscopic scale. Importantly, comparisons with 2D images show that it is possible to resolve single cells isolated from the main cellular structure with our lensfree diffractive tomography setup.