Widefield standing wave microscopy of red blood cell membrane morphology with high temporal resolution

We report the first demonstration of widefield standing wave (SW) microscopy of fluorescently labelled red blood cells at high speeds that allow for the rapid imaging of membrane deformations. Using existing and custom MATLAB functions, we also present a method to generate 2D and 3D reconstructions of the SW data for improved visualization of the cell. We compare our technique with standard widefield epifluorescence imaging and show that the SW technique not only reveals more topographical information about the specimen but does so without increasing toxicity or the rate of photobleaching and could make this a powerful technique for the diagnosis or study of red blood cell morphology and biomechanical characteristics.