Label-free analysis of the characteristics of a single cell trapped by acoustic tweezers

Abstract

Single-cell analysis is essential to understand the physical and functional characteristics of cells. The basic knowledge of these characteristics is important to elucidate the unique features of various cells and causative factors of diseases and determine the most effective treatments for diseases. Recently, acoustic tweezers based on tightly focused ultrasound microbeam have attracted considerable attention owing to their capability to grab and separate a single cell from a heterogeneous cell sample and to measure its physical cell properties. However, the measurement cannot be performed while trapping the target cell, because the current method uses long ultrasound pulses for grabbing one cell and short pulses for interrogating the target cell. In this paper, we demonstrate that short ultrasound pulses can be used for generating acoustic trapping force comparable to that with long pulses by adjusting the pulse repetition frequency (PRF). This enables us to capture a single cell and measure its physical properties simultaneously. Furthermore, it is shown that short ultrasound pulses at a PRF of 167 kHz can trap and separate either one red blood cell or one prostate cancer cell and facilitate the simultaneous measurement of its integrated backscattering coefficient related to the cell size and mechanical properties.