We develop and employ a broad portfolio of techniques to measure the biophysical properties of cells. Our optical and mechanical/rheological toolbox includes:
Deformability Cytometry (DC)
DC comprises the measurement of cell deformability by deforming cells in microchannel flow [Urbanska, 2020]. The most prominent example developed in our group is Real-Time Deformability Cytometry (RT-DC). RT-DC enables single-cell mechanical measurements at throughputs up to 1.000 cells/second with real-time analysis. Subsequent advancements include the additions of simultaneous fluorescence measurements, machine-learning-assisted sorting, and
viscoelasticity measurements [Otto 2015, Rosendahl 2018, Nawaz 2022, Reichel 2024].
Optical Diffraction Tomography (ODT)
ODT is a holographic technique to measure the optical phase information in 3D. We use ODT to map the refractive index of biological samples and infer the mass density at sub-micrometer resolution [Kim 2022, Möckel 2024].
Brillouin Microscopy (BM)
BM is an optical technique to quantitively map the mechanical properties inside a material in 3D and in a non-invasive way [Kabakova 2024]. We use BM to measure objects from subcellular compartments up to the scale of living organisms. Our combined BM-ODT setup offers a unique way to measure the mechanical properties of biological samples by simultaneously measuring the Brillouin shift, the refractive index, and the material density [Schlüßler 2022].
Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)
The workhorse in the cell and tissue mechanics community. We use AFM mainly to measure the mechanical properties of adherent cells and tissue slices [Möllmert 2020, Kolb 2023].
Hydrogel Beads
We use hydrogel beads made from polyacrylamide with controlled sizes in the range of 10-20 µm and controlled stiffness of 0.5-10 kPa as force sensors to calibrate our devices and to measure the forces acting in living tissues [Girardo 2018, Wagner 2019, Träber 2019].
Software
We developed several software packages to accelerate the data analysis for our method toolset. You find an overview of our available packages here.
Contact
Cell Physics Division
Prof. Jochen Guck
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light
Staudtstr. 2
91058 Erlangen, Germany
+49 9131 8284 501
+49 9131 8284 502
Principal Investigator
Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin
Kussmaulallee 2
91054 Erlangen, Germany
