Cell Optics Modeling with the Parallel FDTD method

Description

Modeling of light scattering with biological cells. In this project, we study the spectroscopy of infrared light scattering by biological cells and media through a rigorous approach to obtain electromagnetic fields of the scattered light. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) codes is being parallized for conducting large-scale calculations to explore the correlation between the distribution of the scattered light and the cellular structure and activity.

Light scattering by red blood cells (RBC). Study of RBC has attracted significant attention in recent years for quantitative study of RBC deformation under shear and their effects in blood viscosity. However, all existing analytical tools are based on the Mie theory and various diffraction approximations which do not provide accurate results on the distribution of scattered light by red blood cells with non-spherical shapes which varies in response to pressure, physiological and pathological conditions. In this project we obtain the distribution of the light scattered by a RBC in the full range of scattering angle between 0 to 180 degrees in different planes of scattering   using the FDTD method with an improved boundary condition for simulation accuracy.

Publications

· R. S. Brock, X.H. Hu, D.A. Weidner, J.R. Mourant, J.Q. Lu, "Effect of Detailed Cell Structure on Light Scattering Distribution: FDTD study of a B-cell with 3D Structure Reconstructed from Confocal Images", to be published in Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer (2006)

· J.Q. Lu, P. Yang, X.H. Hu, "Simulations of Light Scattering from a Biconcave Red Blood Cell Using the FDTD method", Journal of Biomedical Optics, 10(2), 024022 (2005)

· R. S. Brock, X.H. Hu, D.A. Weidner, J.R. Mourant, J.Q. Lu, "Effect of detailed cell structure on light scattering distribution: FDTD study of a B-cell with 3D structure constructed from confocal images", Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer, 102, 25-36 (2006)

· J.Q. Lu, R. S. Brock, P. Yang, X.H. Hu, "Modeling of light scattering by single red blood cells with a FDTD method", to be published in Optics of Biological Particles, ed. by A. Hoekstra, G. Videen and V. Maltsev (Springer, 2006)

· Ding, J.Q. Lu, R.S. Brock, T.J. McConnell, J.F. Ojeda, K.M. Jacobs, X.H. Hu, “Angle-resolved Mueller matrix study of light scattering by B-cells at three wavelengths of 442, 633 and 850 nm”, Journal of Biomedical Optics, 12, 034032 (2007)

· M.A. Yurkin, A.G. Hoekstra, R.S. Brock, J.Q. Lu, “Systematic comparison of the discrete dipole approximation and the finite difference time domain method for large dielectric scatterers”, Optics Express, 15, 17902-17911 (2007)