Correlative three-dimensional fluorescence and refractive index tomography: bridging the gap between molecular specificity and quantitative bioimaging

Optical diffraction tomography (ODT) provides label-free three-dimensional (3D) refractive index (RI) measurement of biological samples. However, due to the nature of the RI values of biological specimens, ODT has limited access to molecular specific information. Here, we present an optical setup combining ODT with three-channel 3D fluorescence microscopy, to enhance the molecular specificity of the 3D RI measurement. The 3D RI distribution and 3D deconvoluted fluorescence images of HeLa cells and NIH-3T3 cells are measured, and the cross-correlative analysis between RI and fluorescence of live cells are presented.