Single-cell physical phenotyping of mechanically dissociated tissue biopsies for fast diagnostic assessment

The prevalent method of intraoperative consultation pathology is time, labour and cost intensive and requires the expertise of trained pathologists. Here, we present an alternative technique for the rapid, label-free analysis of biopsy samples by sequentially assessing the physical phenotype of singularized, suspended cells in high-throughput.

This new diagnostic pipeline combines enzyme-free, mechanical dissociation of tissues with real-time deformability cytometry at measurement rates of 100 – 1,000 cells/sec, and machine learning-based analysis. We show that physical phenotype parameters extracted from brightfield images of single cells can be used to distinguish subpopulations of cells in various tissues, without prior knowledge or the need for molecular markers.