Polarized light scattering spectroscopy of epithelial structures

Summary form only given. Measuring cellular structures is an important problem in biomedical sciences. The ability to extract quantitative information in living cells without destroying them could be used, for example, to determine the cellular structure of tissue culture preparations or to noninvasively monitor morphological and physiological changes in patients. At present, there are only a limited number of techniques, such as flow citometry or electron microscopy, capable of probing intracellular structures, and applying them to living cells in situ is difficult. We are presenting a new method of probing the environment inside of living cells, which is based on polarized light scattering spectroscopy. Our technique employs a wavelength-dependent component of light Mie-scattered from epithelial cell nuclei to measure the size distribution of these nuclei and their refractive index.