Objectives: Terahertz (THz)-based imaging techniques hold great potential for biological and biomedical applications, which nevertheless are hampered by the low spatial resolution of conventional THz imaging systems. In this work, we report a high-performance photoconductive antenna microprobe-based near-field THz time-domain spectroscopy scanning microscope.
Materials and methods: A single watermelon pulp cell was prepared on a clean quartz slide and covered by a thin polyethylene film. The high performance near-field THz microscope was developed based on a coherent THz time-domain spectroscopy system coupled with a photoconductive antenna microprobe. The sample was imaged in transmission mode.
Results: We demonstrate the direct imaging of the morphology of single watermelon pulp cells in the natural dehydration process with our near-field THz microscope.
Conclusions: Given the label-free and non-destructive nature of THz detection techniques, our near-field microscopy-based single-cell imaging approach sheds new light on studying biological samples with THz.
Keywords: dehydration; near-field imaging; photoconductive antenna microprobe; scanning microscope; single cell; terahertz.
© 2020 The Authors. Cell Proliferation Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.