Microfluidic Devices for Real-time Infrared Imaging of Living Cells

The detection of biological events in living systems is a topic that stands at the edge of Physics, Biology, and Engineering. In the last years, the teams of Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Lithography (LILIT_IOM-CNR, Trieste, Italy) and of the Synchrotron Infrared Source for Spectroscopy and Imaging (SISSI@Elettra Synchrotron Light laboratory in Trieste, Italy) focused their efforts into the development of methodologies and technologies for transforming InfraRed MicroSpectroscopy (IRMS) into a mature technique to observe in real time biological processes, improving the set-up for performing in vitro bioexperiments under physiological conditions [1, 2]. In this paper the real-time monitoring of the generation of the Extra Cellular Matrix of MCF-7 cells in calcium fluoride microfluidic devices will be presented as an example of infrared hyperspectral imaging under physiological conditions.