Neuromorphic Cytometry: Implementation on cell counting and size estimation

Abstract

Flow cytometry is a widespread and high-throughput technology that can measure the features of cells and can be combined with fluorescence analysis for additional phenotypical characterisations but only provide low-dimensional output and spatial resolution. Imaging flow cytometry is another technology that offers rich spatial information, allowing more profound insight into single-cell analysis. However, offering such high-resolution, full-frame feedback can compromise speed and has become a significant trade-off challenge to tackle during development. In addition, the current dynamic range offered by conventional photosensors can only capture limited fluorescence signals, exacerbating the difficulties in elevating performance speed. Neuromorphic photo-sensing architecture focuses on the events of interest via individual-firing pixels to reduce data redundancy and provide low latency in data processing. With the inherent high dynamic range, this architecture has the potential to drastically elevate the performance in throughput by incorporating motion-activated spatial resolution. Herein, we presented an early demonstration of neuromorphic cytometry with the implementation of object counting and size estimation to measure 8 m and 15 m polystyrene-based microparticles and human monocytic cell line (THP-1). In this work, our platform has achieved highly consistent outputs with a widely adopted flow cytometer (CytoFLEX) in detecting the total number and size of the microparticles. Although the current platform cannot deliver multiparametric measurements on cells, future endeavours will include further functionalities and increase the measurement parameters (granularity, cell condition, fluorescence analysis) to enrich cell interpretation.