Flow cytometers are a vital tool for cellular phenotyping but are primarily limited to centralized laboratories due to their bulkiness and cost. Significant efforts have been made to construct on-chip flow cytometers for point-of-care applications, and a promising approach is filter-on-chip flow cytometers utilizing the conventional Bayer RGB filter on imaging cameras to miniaturize key optoelectronic components. However, conventional RGB filters fail to provide spectral channels of sufficient diversity and specificity for accurate identification of fast-moving fluorescence signals. Here, we present an optofluidic system with integrated metasurfaces that serve to increase the number and diversity of the spectral channels. Inverse design of spatially coded metasurfaces is used to maximize the classification accuracy of spectral barcodes generated along the particle trajectory obtained from single-shot imaging. The accuracy of this system is shown to be superior to generic RGB filter approaches while also realizing classification of up to 13 unique combinations of fluorophores, significantly enhancing the capability of portable flow cytometers.

中文翻译：

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用于紧凑型流式细胞术的超表面条形码

流式细胞仪是细胞表型分析的重要工具，但由于其体积大和成本高，主要仅限于集中实验室。人们在构建用于现场护理应用的片上流式细胞仪方面做出了巨大的努力，一种有前景的方法是片上滤波器流式细胞仪，利用成像相机上的传统拜耳 RGB 滤波器来微型化关键光电元件。然而，传统的 RGB 滤光片无法提供足够多样性和特异性的光谱通道来准确识别快速移动的荧光信号。在这里，我们提出了一种具有集成超表面的光流控系统，可增加光谱通道的数量和多样性。空间编码超表面的逆向设计用于最大限度地提高沿单次成像获得的粒子轨迹生成的光谱条形码的分类精度。该系统的准确性优于通用 RGB 滤光片方法，同时还实现了多达 13 种独特的荧光团组合的分类，显着增强了便携式流式细胞仪的功能。