6–10 Jul 2026
University of the Western Cape
Africa/Johannesburg timezone
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Integrated multimodal microscopy with Holographic Optical Tweezers

7 Jul 2026, 17:20
1h 20m
Great Hall (University of the Western Cape)

Great Hall

University of the Western Cape

Poster Presentation Track C - Photonics Poster Session 1

Speaker

Le Roi Du Plessis (Stellenbosch University)

Description

Optical tweezers are a sterile, non-invasive method for the isolating and manipulating single cells in suspension. When combined with microfluidic sample chambers it is possible to control the local environment of a trapped cell. This control over the extracellular environment of individual cells, allows one to monitor changes in cellular activity and cell morphology due to changes in the surrounding environment.

In this poster, we present an overview of a custom multimodal microscope integrated with optical tweezers (biophotonics platform), which has been constructed and used to monitor changes in the morphology and metabolic activity of single yeast cells under various cell stress environments. The poster also includes a brief descriptions of holographic optical tweezers (HOT), which uses a spatial light modulator to shape the optical field used to trap multiple cells, and optical quadrature microscopy (OQM), a quantitative phase imaging (QPI) technique used to image the phase variations within a trapped cell.

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Author

Le Roi Du Plessis (Stellenbosch University)

Co-authors

Calvin Groenewald (Stellenbosch University) Gurthwin Bosman (Stellenbosch University) Pieter Neethling (Stellenbosch University)

Presentation materials

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