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Photothermal method was applied to improve sensing and imaging capabilities of a light microscope in cell studies. We describe the methods, technical details and testing results of cytometric application of Laser Photothermal Phase Microscope (LPPM). The merits of the proposed approach include living single cell monitoring capability, quantitative measurement of cell functional features through the use of cell natural chromophores as the sensors. Such intracellular sensors are activated by the laser pulse and transform an absorbed energy into the heat. The latter causes thermal and mechanical loads to a cell and its components. The second stage of the process includes the reaction of the cell as integral system or of its components to such loads. This reaction is caused by the changes of cell functional and structural state and includes alterations of cell optical properties. Both processes are monitored for a single cell non-invasively with probe laser beam. Pulsed phase contrast dual beam illumination scheme with acquisition of several laser images at different stages of cell-laser interaction was introduced. An acquired cell image is considered as spatially and temporally resolved cell response to non-specific load that is induced in a cell with a pump laser. This method eliminates any cell staining and allows to monitor cell viability and cell reaction to the environmental factors. Also LPPM offers further improvement of spatial and temporal resolution of optical microscope: with pulsed probe laser monitoring we can detect components with the size down to 50 nm and temporal resolution of 10 ns. In our set up the cell is pumped by pulsed laser at 532 nm, 10 ns , 0.01-0.4 mJ. The source of probe beam is a pulsed dye laser (630 nm, 10 nJ, 10 ns) which forms cell phase image. The results obtained with living cells such as drug impact control, single cell dosimetry, immune action of light on a cell demonstrate basic features of LPPM as the tool for the study of the spectral and spatial low-absorption distribution in living cells in addition to techniques of active thermal probing of sub-micron, low-absorbing samples.
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