Single-cell metabolomics is an ongoing project at the Bio Engineering Laboratory (BEL) of the ETH Zürich. We established a system where single cells are flown through microfluidic channels. In order to analyze specific features of the cells (e.g. cell size, dead or alive cell), we use multi-frequency impedance spectroscopy, where different features can be analyzed at different frequencies.
One main problem in the analysis of the impedance measurement is that no particular information about the flowing cells is known. If the cells are flown at high velocities, which is crucial for high through-put, optical observation with a standard camera is very limited.
The DVS (www.siliconretina.ini.uzh.ch) is an optical sensor with limited spatial but practically unlimited temporal resolution, able to see all cells at high velocities and to record their trajectories. The aim of this thesis is to use the information from the DVS in order to evaluate and improve the analysis of the impedance measurements.