Marker-free phenotyping of tumor cells by fractal analysis of reflection interference contrast microscopy images.

Klein, Katharina; Maier, Timo; Hirschfeld-Warneken, Vera C; Spatz, Joachim P · Nano Lett · 2013

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Phenotyping of tumor cells by marker-free quantification is important for cancer diagnostics. For the first time, fractal analysis of reflection interference contrast microscopy images of single living cells was employed as a new method to distinguish between different nanoscopic membrane features of tumor cells. Since tumor progression correlates with a higher degree of chaos within the cell, it can be quantified mathematically by fractality. Our results show a high accuracy in identifying malignant cells with a failure chance of 3%, which is far better than today's applied methods.

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