Imaging Intracellular Metabolic Activity of Mammalian Oocytes by Dynamic Full-Field Optical Coherence Microscopy

Full-field optical coherence microscopy (FF-OCM) is ideally suited to study living cells as it provides high-resolution cross-section images with no need for fluorescent labelling [1], [2]. The OCM signal is proportional both to the scattering potential of the sample, providing structural information, and to the motion amplitude of the inter-cellular structures. Thus, the metabolic activity information can be extracted from the spatiotemporal analysis of the OCM images. This technique is particularly appealing for embryology to noninvasively assess the development potential of living cells, e.g., oocytes [3].