In-vivo acoustic imaging of thermally induced changes of a single cell

In-vivo acoustic microscopy with frequency at 1.0 GHz was used for imaging a living human skin cancer cell when applying the thermal insult to it. First, for finding the heat effect of the cell, we located a chamber having the heating plate with temperature controller on the X-Y stage of the scanning acoustic microscope (SAM). The cell was grown on the surface of the sapphire substrate to maximize the difference in attenuation for visualizing the cells with frequency at 1.0 GHz. We gradually increased the temperature of the culturing medium from 37.5°C to 50°C, and carried out in-situ observation. The phenomena indicating cellular insult and injury (e.g., shrinkage, volume change or lift-off) were clearly visualized and measured.