Progress and advances in the development of a label-free optofluidic platform based on quantitative phase digital holographic microscopy and microfluidics for the identification of human disease-specific cell phenotypes

Advances in stem cell technology allow the reprogramming of patient-derived cells, obtained from urine samples or skin biopsies, into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can then be differentiated into any cell type. With this goal in mind, we will present how experimental developments, mostly in the field of microfluidics, can be used to extract several relevant spatiotemporal biophysical properties from the quantitative phase signal provided by digital holographic microscopy, thus moving towards the realization of a truly effective optofluidic platform for non-invasive characterization of cell structure and dynamics. Such label-free characterization is highly conducive to the identification of disease-specific cell phenotypes when comparing iPSC-derived cells from control and diseased patients.